


No Alpha Needed

by nerdydemonlover



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alpha Castiel/Omega Dean Winchester, Alpha/Omega, Kid Fic, Kidnapping, M/M, Mpreg, Pining, Teacher Dean Winchester, so much pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-15 09:43:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 27
Words: 62,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18496369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdydemonlover/pseuds/nerdydemonlover
Summary: Dean and Cas meet and it's fireworks at first sight, but a misunderstanding drives them apart. Years later after surviving horrible circumstances, both men (both single fathers) meet accidentally on the other side of the country. Dean's got a u-haul's worth of secrets now, will Cas help him unpack.





	1. Chapter One

**DEAN**

**To Dean:** _Will I see you again?_

Dean stared at his phone as he made his way into the garage, grinning as he shucked off his jacket. 

**From Dean:** _Maybe? I gotta work the next few days. I could do Sunday?_

He threw the coat in his locker and grabbed a pair of coveralls to change into when his phone pinged again. 

**To Dean:** _Are you going to tell me your name, Omega?_

He finished changing before he let himself answer the alpha’s question. He shook his head with a smile as he remembered bumping into the man on the dancefloor the night before. A couple of drinks in already, plus the madness from getting through finals had him, Jo, Ash, and Victor letting loose in the club. The six-foot, dark haired alpha looked like he stepped out of one of the medical dramas that Dean absolutely swore he didn't watch and had bewitched him-he was certain of it. He never was that unrestrained. Vic claimed that the two of them were going to get them all thrown out, the way they had moved together on the dance floor. The grinding and pulsing together with the music had stirred up a pheromone haze between them. The way that they moved together later when the alpha took Dean to his hotel was something else, altogether. He'd had plenty of sex before, even a time or two with an alpha and their knot, but this was filthy and needful, not unlike how he was in the middle of heat. Plus, the alpha had not been able to stop scenting him the entire way to the hotel, practically licked a hole in his neck on the way there. Not to mention the way he had responded to the alpha, so desperate and needy. In the locker room, Dean frowned for a moment and opened the app that tracked his cycle, his fingers were shaking. He was not due until later in the week. He let the breath he had been holding out. He only had one more semester of college left, and he couldn't get sidetracked. 

**From Dean:** _If we go out on a real date, then yes, Alpha._

Dean chewed on his bottom lip while he waited for the response, glancing around to make sure he was alone. Scent compatibility was not everything, hell his parents showed that, but it usually went a long way in determining other ways that couples fit each other. This guy, Dean had never smelled anyone half as good as this guy did, petrichor and fir trees--like the time they had all traveled to the giant redwoods in California when Sammy was first looking at Stanford. All clean and powerful, he wanted to roll around in it. If Dean had not needed to get to the garage early today, he would have waited for the man to wake up and had an actual discussion with him, with words and everything. Instead, he was here in the locker room, holding his cell in his shaking hand, willing it to ring. 

**To Dean:** _Just tell me where and when, Omega._

Dean punched the air with his free hand and then very carefully typed in the name of a coffeehouse a few blocks from his apartment, Sunday 1pm, before letting him know that he had to get to work and couldn't spend the rest of the morning texting. He shut the phone off and stowed it in his locker before heading inside and grabbing the work schedule for the day, smiling the whole time.

 **CASTIEL**

Castiel struggled with his tie in the hotel for five solid minutes before his sister, Hannah, took pity on him. “How is it, big brother, that you can make these multi-million dollar deals every day, and you still have a problem with a tie?”

He frowned as he lifted his chin so she could straighten his collar, “Because, sister dear,” he grabbed her hands as she finished and held them to his throat, “Amara Novak knew how to do a lot of things, and she taught me everything I know, but this was not one of those things.”

Hannah’s ghost of a smile radiated through her face. “You miss her.”

Castiel sighed, “Aunt Amara was as much a mother to me as our mom was. I know you and Jimmy were never as close to her, and she had a great deal of faults—trust me, I know—but yeah, I do. Especially on days like today.”

Hannah’s eyes twinkled, “It’s not everyday your twin brother announces his impending mate! Have you met her?”

“Amelia? A few times.” He grabbed the suit jacket off the hanger and smoothed it on. “Very nice. Beta, of course. You know Jimmy.”

She rolled her eyes, “I bet mother was thrilled with that. A lovely beta woman for her alpha son, the perfect pair. Now she’s going to be all over you, you know?”

He turned his back to disguise the blush that had crept into his cheeks. He struggled, but managed to make his voice even, “Yes, well, you never know, hopefully I’ll bump into someone.” He tamped down the memory of the beautiful omega he had slept with two days before, the one he had been texting and still didn’t know the name of. The closed his eyes and could still recall the scent of oranges and gardenias that had clung to the bed after he had left. 

Hannah spun him around, grabbing him by the shoulders, her fingernails digging in. “Tell me! Oh god, do I know them? Who is it?”

Castiel raised a hand up to stop her interrogation before she built too much of a head start. “No, you don’t know him, I barely know him. We have a date tomorrow; I will tell you more after that.”

She harrumphed and flopped onto the bed. “You suck at this gossip thing, Cassie. Jimmy is much better than you.”

He cleared his throat, “Han, I don’t even have his name yet. How can I tell you anything?”

“How do you not have his name, dork?”

Castiel straightened and felt himself blushing again, “We were…busy.”

The laugh that erupted from his sister was worth all the kidding. “Only you, brother dear, would find your mate in a one-night stand and not get his name.”

He turned away from her for one last look in the mirror before leaving, “It’s not a one-night stand if you have a second date.”


	2. Chapter Two

**DEAN**

Dean stood stiffly at the back of the ballroom in his starched shirt and slacks, the tray of drinks perched neatly in his hand. Jo appeared next to him, also laden down with champagne. “How did I let you talk me into this?” he whispered to her.

Jo had mastered the art of speaking through a smile without moving her lips, Dean was slightly envious. “Because, mom needed help, and these people are paying us $500 a person to have drinks ready for some big announcement. I figured you’d want in on that.”

He saw the subtle head nod from Ellen that signaled it was time to start distributing the alcohol. As one-night gigs go, there were a lot of worse ways to make $500, so he plastered a smile on and passed out glasses until his tray was empty, returning to the kitchen to do it all over again. There were several other friends of theirs doing the same so he stuck mainly to the back, wondering if the classy crowd that he was serving drinks to would look down on a kid like him. He reminded himself that he was the help and they probably didn’t even notice him to begin with. His stomach rolled, and his smile became tight. 

He relaxed against the back wall with Jo once everyone had a glass in hand, he glanced at his phone again. The last text from the alpha still on his screen. 

**To Dean:** _Counting the hours…_

He looked back up and slipped the phone back in his pocket when Jo elbowed him. An older, refined woman stood on the dais addressing the crowd of people there. Dean could see the top half of the head of a man standing slightly behind her, as if waiting for a turn. The dark hair reminded him of the alpha, although his was combed neatly, not pulled in every crazy direction from their wild love-making. She droned on, thanking the esteemed guests for their being there, how happy she was to share this moment. 

He could feel himself slipping into a daydream about the alpha again when Jo stepped on his foot. He looked down at her as she glared back at him and then turned back to the stage. He turned his attention to the front of the room again. “…my son, James Novak.”

Dean straightened against the wall, it was him, his alpha—well, not his alpha, not yet at least. Still as handsome as the other night, although prim and proper here, as would be expected. And Dean had a name for the man, James. It was a fine name, although it did not seem to ring in his head like some of the ones he had imagined for the alpha, it was so common. He had envisioned a name that felt strong, and unique. He would accept it though; silly overactive imagination was all it was. 

“Thank you all so much for being here today.” James addressed the people standing in front of him. The corners of Dean’s mouth tilted up when he remembered the voice so much raspier and deeper as he fucked into him, telling Dean not to come yet. “I know that this is no surprise to so much of my friends and family here today, but I’m here today to introduce you to my future mate and bride to be, Amelia Parker.” 

The brass serving tray dropped out of Dean’s hands, but the sound was muffled by the sound of the applause. He ducked down and grabbed it, before turning and dashing into the kitchen. “Dean? Are you okay? Dean?” He could hear Jo calling for him from where he had burst through the back door, but he could not make himself answer her. He spotted his car at the far end of the parking lot, were the service people were supposed to keep to, and made a bee line for it. The words of the alpha still ringing in his head.

He sat in the dark of his car and pulled out his phone. He looked at the text again and tapped on it, intending to write a scathing response, but he saw Jo’s blonde head stick out the back door and knew he had no time. He deleted it, quickly blocked the number, and sped off without a word to anyone. 

**CASTIEL**

Castiel stood at the front of the crowd, next to his sister and cousins, watching his twin make the announcement. He was so happy for the two of them. Jimmy and him had become so different through the years, his brother a quiet, artistic alpha. Castiel, through the example of his Aunt Amara, also an alpha, a businessman known for no nonsense and a shrewd acumen. 

A clatter was barely heard over the applause of the announcement, Castiel turned his head, but only saw a member of the wait staff duck into the kitchen. Probably, dropped the tray on accident and is busy dying of embarrassment in the kitchen. He chuckled to himself, they had all looked like college students and were most likely scared out of their wits in a group like this. But the caterers had done a splendid job. Jimmy and him both were thrilled that their mother had gone with a local favorite, the Roadhouse. The burgers at the restaurant made him very happy. Maybe on their next date he would take his omega there. He smiled again and clapped vigorously at his brother and his fiancée. 

He saw his brother and his soon to be mate approach. “Cassie! Good to have you here!” Jimmy pulled him into a hug. 

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Castiel released his brother and turned to Amelia, embracing her in turn. “Welcome to the family, Ames.”

Jimmy and Amelia grabbed each other’s hands and smiled at Castiel. “So, Cassie, you planning on settling down soon? Or are you still content to be one of Forbes most eligible alphas?”

“Eh, we’ll see.” Castiel smiled and raised his champagne glass to his mouth to deflect the question. Luckily for him, another well wisher caught his brother’s attention before Jimmy could follow up on it. He pulled out his phone and noticed that his last text had been left on read, but unanswered. He frowned before deciding that the luscious omega was probably just busy and had not had a chance to respond. He had mentioned working tonight waiting tables or something. He decided to send another text.

**To Dean:** _So happy to spend tonight with my family sharing some well-deserved good news. Would only be better if you were on my arm._

He hit send only to have a red exclamation point appear next to it and small text underneath that said, “not delivered”. He furrowed his brows and hit retry. The same thing happened. He jumped when a hand clapped him on the shoulder.

“Cassie! Why the long face?” His cousin, Gabriel, hand on his shoulder, his cheeks pink from the alcohol.

Castiel waved his cell in the air. “I’m trying to send a message to someone, and it won’t go through.”

Gabriel downed the rest of the glass in his hand. “It’s these buildings, man. Can’t get signal for shit sometimes.”

“Hmm, true.” Castiel glared at his phone again before Gabriel removed it from his hands and put it in his own pockets. 

“Stop that. You look like you want to smite it.” Gabriel smoothly set the glass down on the tray of a passing waiter with barely a glance. “Now, there was a cute little redheaded thing passing the drinks out earlier. Help me find her, and I’ll give you your phone back.”

Castiel stared at his cousin, but Gabriel was immune to it by now, and had turned to wind his way through the crowded floor on the hunt for the redheaded target. 

He awoke the next morning in his hotel room with a headache, the scent of oranges and gardenias had faded from the bed, even though the hotel staff had not changed the bedding. They all assumed that he was being ‘green’ but really it had been a desire to hold onto the aroma as long as he could. He grabbed his phone from the bedside table and checked the message screen. His last message to the omega still said not delivered. He shot off a text to his business partner, Baltazar, to see if he was having problems with everyone. That one was answered promptly and far too cheerfully for this hour of the morning. Perhaps that man had lost his phone and had shut it off while he was getting a new one. Of course, that had to be it. He would simply see him today at lunch and they would laugh about the whole thing. 


	3. Chapter Three

**DEAN**

Dean sat in the window seat of his local coffee place, sipping his too hot caramel drink that he usually denied liking. Today however, his funk called for it. 

Jo plopped down next to him, pulling out a wad of cash. “Hey, moron, you took off last night before you got paid. Luckily, I covered for you and told mom you got sick and ducked out at the end.”

He grabbed the money from her and stuffed it in his wallet without even looking at it. “Thanks, Jo. ‘Preciate it.” 

“You aren’t even going to count it? I could have totally shorted you.”

Dean just shrugged one shoulder. “You would have earned it. I did leave you hanging.” 

“What’s wrong with you?” Jo put a hand on his forehead. “You really sick or something?”

He shook his head and took another sip of his coffee, collecting his thoughts before trying to start talking. “You were there okay? The guy they were having the party for, you saw him?”

She scrunched her eyebrows together, “John or James Something?”

Dean looked back down at his lap, the edge of his fingernail picking at the small opening in the lid of the cup. “James Novak, yeah. That—that was the guy from the other night at the club.”

Jo’s jaw dropped open. “Are you sure? I mean it was pretty dark in there.”

“I kind of remember the faces of the people that suck my brains out of my dick and then knot me into next week. Anyhow, we’ve been texting, had a date for today, because you know I had to work last night, and he had this ‘family thing’ anyway. Next thing I know, I’m watching him introduce his fiancée to the entire world.”

She sat quietly beside him for a moment. “Fucking asshole alphas. What are you going to do?”

“I’m not going to do a damn thing, Jo.” He turned and looked her in the eye. “I already blocked his number, that was the only way of getting ahold of me. He can’t track me down by my name because, well, we didn’t exactly exchange a lot of information.” He shrugged again, “Couple weeks school starts back up, and in May I’m fucking done, no more alphas, either. Maybe I’ll move to California and be near Sammy at Stanford.”

Jo leaned over an put her head on his shoulder, “I’d miss you though.” 

He kissed the top of her head before turning his and resting it against hers. “Me too.”

 **CASTIEL**

It was already ten after one. Castiel sat in the booth at the coffeeshop, promising himself he would not scroll through the text messages again to make sure he had the right place. He had reviewed the time and place several times already. The server came back around to refill his water and ask if he wanted to order. He stared up at the woman blankly, “Oh, um yes. Turkey club please, no onion.”

She jotted his order down in her notebook. “Anything else? Something to drink perhaps?”

Castiel shook his head. “No, thank you. The water is fine.” She turned to walk away, and he stopped her. “On second thought, do you have any pie?”

“Yessir,” she grinned. “Best pie in town. Today we got Lemon Meringue, cherry, and deep-dish apple.”

“I’ll have a slice of the apple.” He slumped back into the booth after she had left, his smile wiped clean from his face. He checked the undelivered messages again. Still they would not go through. He scrolled back through the rest of the conversation, trying to see where he went wrong, where he had scared off the man, but it all read so real—so earnest and hopeful. Clearly it had not been a case of incompatibility with scents since they had hit it off the first night so well. Too many scenarios filled his head, from the man was dead somewhere to he had simply met someone else in a whirlwind courtship and forgot Castiel. His inner alpha howled at the suggestion and he wanted to pull at his hair and pace the restaurant until he found the right scent. His phone pinged in his hand, but his heart fell to his stomach when he saw that it was only Hannah wishing him luck. As he considered his reply, the waitress returned with the food he never had any desire to eat.

“I’m sorry,” Castiel waved his phone in the air pretending he had an emergency. “Could I just get this boxed up to go and the check please?”

“Of course, sir. Just a moment.” The waitress nodded and hurried away.

Once free of the restaurant and in the privacy of his rental car, he decided he needed to hear his sister’s voice rather than try and explain things through text. 

She picked up quickly. “Cassie, I thought you would be on your date.”

“About that, looks like I’ve been stood up.”

“Cassie, no! You were so sure things were going well!”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “We were supposed to meet at one, and I just left the café two minutes ago, so I was there for what, 20 minutes? Plus, every time I’ve tried to text him or call since last night, the call won’t go through. Not that he doesn’t answer, it doesn’t go through. I can only assume that he doesn’t want to see me, for whatever reason.”

“You don’t think it’s possible that something happened to him, do you?”

“Of course, Han!” Castiel leaned his head back on the headrest. “I have considered every possible scenario, even the absurd. That, as an omega, he was sold like it was suddenly 100 years ago and they were property. The only thing that makes sense is that, for whatever reason, he doesn’t want to see me.”

“Come back to the hotel, Cassie. We’ll find Gabriel and get drunk and watch trashy movies.”

Castiel started the car’s engine, “On my way, sis. Thank you.” 

“Love you, Cassie. See you in a minute.”


	4. Chapter Four

**DEAN**

Dean sat at his kitchen table, trying to get himself back into the swing of his coursework. It was his last semester, next year he would have to do his student teaching and then he would be fully accredited teacher. He shook his head in disbelief, if his twelve-year-old self could see him now. He was thoroughly exhausted, however. Working overtime as much as he could during the break, the heartbreaking disappointment that the guy he had such a connection with was actually cheating scum had taken a toll on him. Jo thought they must have scent bonded, but Dean has his doubts, after all Lisa and him had not managed to do that for all the months they had lived together. Then again, Lisa was a beta and bonds between betas and omegas were weaker. He was just thankful that he had blocked the man’s number, the amount of times that Dean wanted to call him and light him up had been innumerable that first week. Now, it was just a dull regret of feeling used. 

He shook his head to clear it and turned his mind back to his laptop. As his final semester, it was mainly projects that would take the entire term and he needed to decide on topics, not worry about things that didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t hear the door open and Jo race in. “Dean, you gotta help me!”

“I gave you that key for emergencies, not so you can just walk in here anytime you want.”

She ran past him into the bathroom carrying a plastic bag and came back with something clutched in her hands. Her face had gone pale. “Shut it, Winchester, this is an emergency.”

Dean turned all the way towards her, “What’s going on?”

She held a long thin box out to him, “I’m late, Dean. What if I’m pregnant? What am I going to do?”

He stood up and hugged her, “It’s okay. Have you talked to Victor yet?”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at the ground. “We’re not talking to each other right now.” 

“What, why?” Dean’s forehead furrowed, Jo and Vic had been a solid couple for years. 

She flopped onto the couch, “Ugh, he wants to go into the FBI academy after graduation, like has already talked to them and everything. I still need to go to med school. What if I get accepted into like UCLA or something and he’s out in Virginia, how’s that going to work?”

“Jo, you’re making this unreasonably difficult.”

She shot up and turned on him, “I should have known you’d take his side! Why shouldn’t I go to med school?”

Dean stood and put his hands on her shoulders, “Hey, hey. I’m not saying that. I want you to go. You’re going to be a great surgeon someday, after all you have an unhealthy affinity for knives.”

“Okay, so what are you saying, then?” She took a deep breath and looked him in the eye.

“All I think is that unless you have a very specific and compelling reason for it, don’t apply to schools on the west coast, like UCLA. There has to be several near, where is it, Virginia?”

“Yeah, there is. A couple I wanted to apply to anyways.”

“Okay, then. About this test?”

“So, I was supposed to have a heat and be done right before school started. But I didn’t think much of it because Vic and I were fighting and then classes started, and I know stress can sometimes mess with your cycle. Then we stopped talking and yesterday I realized I was late, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. Anyways, I can’t do the test at home because Vic is there and he’d freak out, so I just need someplace to do it. I bought like three tests just in case.”

Dean chuckled when she finally stopped to breathe, “You are always welcome to pee on a stick at my house.”

“Thank you.” Jo jumped into his arms and hugged him tight, before dashing back into the bathroom. When she emerged a minute later, her hands were shaking, and she had a fake smile on her face. 

“Everything okay?”

“Gotta wait three minutes.” She sat on back on the couch and rubbing her palms on her thighs. 

“Do you want some water or something?”

She shook her head and stared straight ahead next to him. 

Dean put his arm around her as they sat and waited in silence. The longer the silence went on, however, the more unsettled he became. Not about his friend, but the fact that he was late as well. He would have to check his calendar as soon as Jo left, but he was sure that his was supposed to be a few days after he had hooked up with that guy he was trying not to think about, James Novak, with the dark bedhead and the vibrant blue eyes. The timer of Jo’s phone startled him out of his internal freak out. He grabbed her hand as she stood up. “Whatever it is, you and Vic, you got this.”

“Thanks Winchester.” She squeezed his hand and let go, walking into the bathroom with her back straight and head up.

Dean quickly opened his phone and checked the ap that noted his cycle, three weeks late. He closed the ap and set the phone down on the coffee table, scrubbing his hand down his face. 

“Oh, thank God!” He heard Jo exclaim from the other room and chuckled for a second. She ran out and threw herself into him and a hug.

"Does this mean no baby?” He asked into her hair.

“Negative, no baby!” she pulled away so she could look at him. “Thanks, man. You know I want them eventually, just not anywhere close to now.”

“I know, I get it. Now, go talk to that man of yours!”

“I will, and thanks for the kick in the butt for that, too.”

Dean put his hand on his chest solemnly, “I will always be here to kick your ass.”

“Asshole!” she punched him in the arm as she untangled herself to leave. 

Dean sat on the couch after she left, his own stomach filling with dread. He was never late, the suppressants pretty much guaranteed that he only had a heat every four months, but they were usually like clockwork. It’s why he installed the ap, so he could let the garage and his teachers know ahead of time. He covered his face with his hands and leaned back into the couch. “No, no, no! Fuck!” He went into the bathroom to check his prescription and every pill that was supposed to be gone, was gone, right on schedule. He sat on the toilet to collect his thoughts and noticed the plastic bag half hanging out of the cabinet. “Dammit, Jo, why you always gotta leave things a mess?” He opened the cupboard and pulled at the bag, only to see that she had left the other two pregnancy tests there. Probably didn’t want to freak Victor out unnecessarily. 

He grabbed one of the boxes and read it. “Test as early as ten days from the start of your first missed heat. Easy to read, 99.7% accurate.” Well, it’s definitely more than ten days. He carefully unwrapped the package with shaking hands and looked through the directions, basically to be told “pee on the stick and wait” 

As he lay on his bed waiting for his own timer to go off to check, he let himself think about James Novak. What was he going to do about him if Dean really was pregnant? The man was about to be married and mated the last Dean had seen him. He was not inclined to let any child of his be raised (even partially) by someone that cheats on their mate. God, and they seemed extremely wealthy, what if this James guy or his family decided that Dean wasn’t good enough and fought for custody? He felt the anger rise in him and almost overwhelm him at the thought, and he wasn’t even positive at this point. ~ding~

He sat up on the bed and leaned his mouth into his hands. He dragged his hands down and rested his chin on them. He realized that it did not even occur to him that the test would be negative or that he would not keep it. He stood and walked into the bathroom and checked the stick sitting on the edge of the sink. A very clear, dark + sign in the window told him what he already knew, he was pregnant. 

Dean sat in the office of Dr. Eleanor Visyak a few days later. The beta had been his doctor at the omega clinic ever since his first heat, and he liked her. 

The blonde doctor knocked, then walked in carrying a clipboard. “Well, Dean, the blood test confirmed it. You are indeed pregnant, about a month along which puts you due sometime in late September. We’ll get a more accurate due date in a few weeks when I can get an ultrasound. Now, it’s too soon to hear a heartbeat or anything, so today is just basic health check. I am going to get you a prenatal vitamin. I checked your paperwork again, it doesn’t say anything about the alpha, are they in the picture? You are required to notify them.”

Dean looked down at his hands before answering. “I…um…haven’t told him. It’s complicated.”

She pursed her lips and nodded, “Well, male omega pregnancies can be difficult. Having the alpha throughout the term will help with a great deal of things.”

Dean looked up at her, eyes wide, “I can’t, Dr. Visyak. Trust me, I’ll do anything else you say, but he can’t know about this.”

The doctor just shook her head, “Dean, I can’t say anything if you don’t want me too. I just want you to have all the facts so that you can make an informed decision.”

“Well, its my baby, and I made that decision already. Now, what do I need to do to keep it healthy?”

  


Dean hesitated outside his boss’s door before knocking. He knew logically that Bobby wouldn’t judge him, not like his dad would’ve, but he would be disappointed that this was going to make things harder for Dean. “I can smell you stinking up the hall with your worrying. Just get in here, ya idgit.” 

He smiled as he opened the door and saw Bobby Singer, beat up trucker hat on his head. Bobby had been more than a family friend to the boys, he had taken them in when Dean was twelve and John had gone to jail for vehicular manslaughter and DUI. 

That crazy son of a bitch had died there, too, out of his mind and raving about yellow eyed demons. The docs had called it a byproduct of the enormous quantities of alcohol John had consumed throughout the years, but Dean, Sam, and Bobby all knew that John hadn’t been right since Mary had died in a fire when Dean was four, the alcohol had just sped things along.

“Well, you going to stand there all day? What are you even doing here? You’re not on the schedule today.” He reached for the schedule on the clipboard behind him to double check, then looked back at Dean, his eyebrows scrunched together.

Dean closed the door behind him and scratched the back of his neck before sitting on the edge of the chair in front of his adoptive father. “You know how I told you that I wasn’t feeling so hot lately?”

Bobby squinted his eyes at him, leaning back, “Yeah. I recall you saying something about that. Like you were dragging, no energy. I told you not to work so hard, remember?”

“About that, I went and saw Dr. Visyak over at the omega clinic yesterday.”

“I suppose the next thing you’re going to tell me is that you’re pregnant.” Bobby chuckled darkly.

The smile on Dean’s face was tight. “End of September there’s going to be another little Winchester.” He waited for a response, sweat starting to bead on his forehead. “Come on, Bobby, say something.”

Bobby sat forward and gaped at him. “But what about school? You’re almost done!”

“I graduate in May. I’ll take a semester off and have the baby, and then start my student teaching in the Spring. It’s okay, Bobby.”

“And the alpha, what does he have to say about this?” Bobby was fiddling absently with the papers strewn over his desk, a sure sign to Dean that the man’s mind was moving a mile a minute.

Dean squirmed in the chair. “I’m not telling him.”

“A father has a right to know, Dean Winchester.” Bobby sat up rigidly and slipped a bit of his alpha voice in.

Dean bared his neck in response. “Bobby, please. He can’t know; besides, I can’t talk to him anyways, I blocked his number.”

"So, unblock it!”

“Bobby, he’s engaged.” Dean could barely hide the whine in his voice as the only true father in his life yelled at him. His internal omega cowling at the raised voice in memory of his alcoholic father. 

“What? You don’t go fooling around with mated couples, ya idjit!”

Dean held his hands up, a last attempt at diffusing the argument. He had to keep calm, or he would dissolve in a puddle of tears (again) and he was determined not to do that. “I didn’t know he was engaged, I didn’t smell another omega in his scent. I found out a couple of days later when I saw him at some…dinner thing. He didn’t know I was there and was announcing it to all his friends or something.”

“Balls!” Bobby swore and took his hat off, wringing it in his hands. “So, you blocked his number. Can’t say I wouldn’t have given him a piece of my mind first.”

“Thought about it.” Dean’s voice barely above a whisper. “But I was in the parking lot and I didn’t want anyone to see me angry texting like a fifteen-year-old girl.” Dean chuckled at the image now. He mimed typing into his phone, “And another thing! —”

“At the time, probably the best thing you could have done. But, Dean, a person has a right to know they have a child.” Bobby’s voice had returned to a normal volume, but the pleading tone was still there.

“What if he wants to take it away, Bobby? They’re rich, they totally could. Make me out to be some penniless omega attempting to hook in a rich alpha for money.” Dean’s eyes widened, full of the unshed tears. “What if they bring up dad…I just can’t take that chance, Bobby.”

Bobby nodded. “Okay, I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.” A tired grin stretched over his face as he relaxed into the chair. “Dean Winchester’s going to be a dad.”

Dean smiled in earnest for the first time since entering Bobby’s office. “Yeah, Grandpa, I am.” He looked down at his hands after a second, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. “Listen, Bobby, you can’t tell anyone yet. Not Ellen, not Jo, and definitely not Sam.”

“Why the hell not? And then why are you telling me?” He scowled at Dean, his voice starting to raise again.

Dean took a deep breath, “Dr. Visyak said I had to let you know because I’m a mechanic and there are some things she doesn’t want me doing. Here’s a note from her.” He handed him the paper that he had been running his fingers along the fold absently.

Bobby scanned through the letter. “This is half your job.”

Dean nodded silently, his eyes fixed on the floor.

“Look at me, boy.” Bobby waited until Dean had raised his head, his cheeks warm from holding back tears. “I’m not going to fire you, ya idgit. I just have to think for a minute.” He scratched his beard. “You know Marisol at the front desk has been wanting to train back here but I didn’t have coverage. You can still do brakes and spark plug changes, it looks like, but anything more strenuous is out. Oil changes are out too cause of fumes. You and her can switch out when there’s not work in the garage for you. I’ll get her back here with Cole or Randy.”

Dean breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks Bobby, you have no idea how much this was freaking me out after I saw that.”

“I can imagine.” Bobby leaned back and crossed his arms in front of him. “Now, what’s this about not talking to Ellen or Sam. You know I don’t like secrets, kid.”

“It’s just, --” Dean stopped for a second to collect his thoughts. “Dr. Visyak said—she said, male omega pregnancies can have some…risks. I just want to wait until the end of the first trimester, said that a lot of the risks go down after that.” He gave a half-hearted smile to his godfather, his hands still shaking a bit in his lap.

Bobby huffed. “You do whatever you need to do, if you don’t feel up to working, let me know, I got you covered. Or time off for doctor’s appointments, whatever, you hear me?”

A tear finally escaped from one of Dean’s eyes as he nodded. “That’s what I’m working on Bobby.”

“Alright, now get out of here, boy. I got shit to do since I just lost my best mechanic.”

Dean grinned, “See ya tomorrow.”


	5. Chapter Five

Dean sat on his couch at home, reading the stack of information Dr. Visyak had given him. Now, as he went through everything again, he was beginning to freak out. He felt confident that he could make it through the pregnancy, but actually parenting a child? He didn’t know the first thing about babies. The last baby he had been around had been Sam, and that had been nearly twenty years ago, and he had been four. He began to feel light headed and laid down on the couch with the balls of his hands pressing into his eyes. “Fuck, I am so screwed.” 

  


He woke up the next morning, realizing it was Saturday and he had a BBQ with Bobby and Ellen later, his stomach was still in knots from the day before. Up until that point, he had been unaffected by much morning sickness, but that morning, he barely made it out of bed and to the toilet before emptying the remains of the previous night’s dinner. He sat on the linoleum with his head against the cool porcelain of the toilet as he waited for the next wave to pass. Dr. Visyak had offered to write a prescription for something for nausea, but he had declined since he had not suffered any at that point. He regretted that decision as he sat on the floor and wondered if this was considered enough of an emergency to call the on-call doc over the weekend. He shook his head to clear it and hauled himself off the floor. As he managed to brush his teeth and swish a bit of mouthwash around to get rid of the taste, he considered how to get through the next several hours with his adoptive family. 

He slumped over the sink. He couldn’t do it, not by himself at least. He considered his doctor’s advice, contacting Novak. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult, after all, Ellen had catered the celebration. No, he wouldn’t do that. His phone buzzed on his nightstand.

Ellen was making sure that he brought pie to the BBQ, as if he would forget that he was supposed to bring pie. Ellen, that was it! Bobby had been right after all, he needed his mother and that had been Ellen (and Bobby) for years after the death of Sam’s and his parents. 

  


He stood on the porch of the farmhouse with the pastry box in one hand, the other clutching the small toy behind his back as he maneuvered his elbow to hit the doorbell. His godmother opened the door, wiping her hands with a dishtowel and squinting up at him. “Dean? Why you standing outside ringing the bell?”

The side of Dean’s mouth curled up in a half smile as he pulled the stuffed bear out from behind him. “Got you a present, El.” 

She grabbed it gingerly from him after slinging the towel over her shoulder. “I don’t understand, boy. What am I going to do with this?” Her head cocked to the side as she looked at him. 

Dean could feel the moisture start in his eyes, “I thought maybe you could give it to your grandbaby.”

He felt the wind get nearly knocked out of him as Ellen grabbed him and hugged him tight. From his view over her shoulder, he saw Bobby coming out of the kitchen. They exchanged a smile and a nod. Ellen must have felt the movement because she let go of Dean as quickly as she had grabbed him and turned on her mate. “Robert Singer! Did you know about this?”

Bobby’s mouth opened and closed, but before he could get any words out, Dean interrupted. “I made him, El. Told him that I wanted to tell you myself. I only told him first because of work stuff, you know, fumes and that sort of thing.” He shrugged and made eye contact with Bobby who smiled and nodded to him. 

“I told him that if he didn’t tell you by the end of the weekend, though, all bets are off.” Bobby took a sip from the beer in his hand and slyly winked at Dean as Ellen turned back to Dean. 

“Well, enough standing around on the porch, let’s get inside and we can get the BBQ going. Jo and Victor should be here soon.” She looked sharply at Dean again and stopped. “Does Jo know?”

Dean chuckled, “No, although she’s who got me thinking about it.”

“What do you mean, boy? Do you know something else?” Ellen’s eyes narrowed to thin slits as her tone darkened.

Dean backed up slightly and raised his hands up in surrender, “No, God, no, Ellen! She and Vic had been fighting and she just burst into my place and started ranting about him wanting to go to the FBI and she was going to be on the other side of the country, and this was the person she thought she wanted to settle down with eventually and have kids with, you know!”

Ellen heaved a deep sigh, “Lord knows, I know! I heard all about it myself. Thought for a hot minute they might break up.”

Dean sat on the couch, the teddy bear somehow back in his hands. “After she left, I got to thinking about this alpha I had met, who at the time I thought, you know, maybe?” He looked down at the bear, looking deep into its blue eyes, very much like another set of blue eyes. He threw the bear to the side. “Anyways, that was a HUGE mistake, but I realized that I hadn’t had my heat, and I had been due for it a few days afterwards. You know me, I’m always on schedule with the suppressants. I have to be because of work and school…so I took a test. Congratulations!” he threw his hands to the side; what Jo had mockingly referred to as “Jazz hands”

Ellen sat beside him and rubbed her hand on his thigh, “So, does this mean the father doesn’t know?”

“Doesn’t know, isn’t going to know.” He covered her hand with his as he hardened his face and looked directly at her. “Look, I know I’ve made a lot of dumb choices in my life, but I’m fairly certain that this one is right. This is my baby, for all intents and purposes your grandchild, Sam and Jo’s niece or nephew, and that’s it. The baby will have a family, they will know they are loved.”

Ellen nodded as a tear ran down her face when suddenly she looked up. “God! Sam! Does he know?”

Dean shook his head, “Not yet. I figured we’d tell him after the first trimester was over. He’s all the way in California, don’t want him distracted unnecessarily.”

“You listen to me, Dean Winchester, if your brother finds out that he’s the LAST one to know, that we all knew months before he did, he’s going to tan your hide, straight up murder you! And I’m not raising another baby at my age!”

“All right, all right! I’ll call Sam today!” Dean flopped back into the sofa, suddenly exhausted from the drama. He felt one hundred percent better than he had that morning, however. 

  


Dean sat on his bed that night, going over the promise that he made to Ellen. Everything had felt so good as he had dinner with his family. Jo had even managed to restrain herself from punching him for once when they told them the news. She had cornered him later to harass him about talking to Novak. As the only one that knew the identity of the father, she threatened him with telling Ellen and Bobby, only convincing her to stay quiet when he told her about his fears that the man—the alpha—could attempt to steal custody from Dean. The weepy hug after was unexpected. He knew he was in for one more argument about this with Sam. The lawyer to be would either be Dean’s greatest enemy in this--or his biggest ally and Dean honestly couldn’t tell which way it would go. 

His finger hovered above the call button. He knew that he had been sitting here for several minutes going back and forth over the same motions. He wished to God he could have a beer, but the doctor had even restricted his caffeine to a cup or two of coffee in the morning at the very most so he was sitting there with herbal peppermint tea that Ellen had promised would also help calm his stomach. He nearly jumped out of his skin when it rang in his hand, “The Heat of the Moment” blaring into the quiet room. 

“Sammy! I was just about to call you.” Dean’s laugh sounded forced even to his own ears and he winced, imagining the pursed lips and angry eyebrows of his ‘little’ brother’s bitch face. 

“Ugh, it’s Sam. How many times do it have to tell you? ‘Sammy’ is a chubby twelve-year-old with pimples who gets picked last for dodgeball.”

“Well, I would feel sorry about that, but you were sloooow.” Dean chuckled as he took a sip from the cup, feeling the warmth spread into him. “Good thing you shot up in your later years.”

“Yeah, whatever, jerk. So, listen, um, Jo called.”

Dean sat up and slammed the mug down on the bedside table, sloshing the hot drink over the sides. “Son of a bitch!”

“So, it’s true then?”

The sound of his brother’s voice had never felt the thousand miles away than he was more than in that minute. “Yeah, I was about to call and tell you, really I swear.” he held his head in the palm of one hand as he cradled the phone next to his ear with the other one.

“Dude, it’s no big deal! I mean, yes, life’s going to be a lot different after graduation than we thought, but wasn’t it going to be anyways?”

Dean relaxed back into the bed, somewhat deflated at how nonchalantly his brother was taking the news. “Wow, you’re taking this rather well. I thought you might be at least a little upset or disappointed or something at least.”

“Why would I be, Dean? I mean, I’m not in the same city as you guys now and there’s always phone calls and skype. You could always get on a plane, you know?”

“No way, man! Those things are not meant to be in the air! Flying tubes of death.”

He heard his brother laugh on the other end. “Dean Winchester, afraid of flying. Well, there had to be something you’re afraid of.”

Dean ran his hand through his hair “To tell you the truth, Sam, this has me scared out of my mind. If I didn’t have Ellen and Bobby to help me with this right now, I—I don’t know what I would do.”

“Dean, you had to figure that Jo and Victor would move away eventually. What did you think would happen when Jo goes to med school?”

“When Jo what? Wait, what exactly did you and Jo talk about?” his eyebrows furrowed and scowled.

The long-suffering sigh of Sam Winchester had to be accompanied by another even worse exasperated face than he normally saved for his brother. “God, what is wrong with you? Jo and Victor have been fighting, you know that right? I mean you practically live together, you’d have to.” Dean rolled his eyes as Sam took a breath and plowed forward. “Jo called this morning before going over to mom’s and told me that they worked it all out. Thanks to you, I hear.”

Dean chuckled without any real humor behind it. “Yeah, Sam, um, that’s not what I was calling to talk about though. Tell you the truth, I kind of forgot all about that.”

“Really?” 

He stood and paced in the small area at the foot of his bed. “So, listen, like a month or so ago, you know just as we were done with finals, we all went out. Sort of a celebration, Jo, Vic, me, Ash. Blowing off steam now that the semester was over, just one more to go, right?”

“Okay? Yeah, I mean my friends and I did that too. What’s the big deal?”

Dean scrubbed his hand down his face. “So, I might have met someone, an—an alpha.”

“Dean, you don’t date alphas.”

“I know, just listen, all right?” He snapped at Sam, frustrated at his brother’s ability to listen without interjecting all the time. 

“Okay, jeez.”

“Alright, so I met this alpha and we hit it off, like off the charts, man. And it was fan-frickin-tastic.”

“Congratulations, Dean! I’m really happy for you.”

“Well, not so fast. Like we’re texting all week because I work and he’s working and has family obligations, which is why he was in town to start with, but we manage to set up a date for the following Sunday, for lunch. You know, like normal people do. But I swear to God, Sammy, it’s just my fricking luck, because the night before that, I’m serving drinks for some high money gig El booked and there’s the guy, on stage, introducing a woman to this huge group of rich schmucks, and she’s his fiancée.”

“Dean, wow! I’m sorry. That blows.”

“Oh, no. It’s worse.” Dean’s gesturing became more erratic as he told the story, anxious to get to the kicker.

“Dude, how could that get worse?”

Dean sat back on the edge of the bed. “How? I’m pregnant, Sam. Pregnant, and the father is handsome and rich and smells like trees and rainstorms and Home. And he’s marrying someone else.” There was silence long enough on the other end of the line that Dean held out his phone in front of him and check to make sure the call was still connected. “Sam?”

“I’m here, Dean. I just don’t know what to say.”

“I know you don’t, you don’t have to.” Dean hung his head, glad to finally have it out.

“Have you told him?”

“I—I’m not going to.”

“What? Dean, you have too! You’re required to notify the alpha.”

“No, Sam. I don’t have to.” He didn’t want to have this argument, again, but he knew he had to get his brother on his side. Dean laid out his reasoning, pleading for his brother to understand. It seemed like they talked for hours, but he knew that it had been less than thirty minutes. Thirty minutes of arguing back and forth about whether Dean had the right to do what he was doing. 

“Sam, I know you are looking at this as a lawyer, but I need you to be my brother right now. I’m telling you that this is how it’s going to be. Now, as my brother, I’m going to trust that you won’t go digging in to this and trying to figure out who it is, because Ellen, Bobby, Jo, they are all on my side with this.”

“Dean, it’s not about being on your side, it’s about doing what’s right.”

“You know what? We are not having this discussion tonight. I have homework and a shift tomorrow and I don’t need this stress right now, it’s not good for the baby. We can talk about this when you can see things from my perspective.” He hit the end call button, frustrated that cell phones did not have the ability to slam the receiver down on someone else and hung his head in his hands. He was still convinced that his decision was the best one for him, he hoped that his brother would come around and be there, when the time came. 


	6. Chapter Six

Dean sat on the exam table, clothed in the standard backless patient gown and a paper sheet over his legs that would not stop bouncing. Ellen eyed him again over the top of the two-year-old Better Homes and Gardens she had snagged from the waiting room. He grinned nervously at her. “I can’t help it! We are going to hear the heartbeat today.” 

She smiled and closed the magazine. “I know. Now, don’t get too excited, it won’t look much like anything more than a jellybean or something in there. Stuff hasn’t changed that much since my day.”

“No, they haven’t,” Dr. Visyak said as she entered the room without either of them noticing. “Mrs. Singer, glad you could make it.” She held out her hand to Ellen to shake before turning to her patient. “You ready to get this show on the road?” 

“Absolutely.” He smacked his leg with his palm, his nervous grin replaced with a more excited one. 

The machine was tucked to the side of the room and the doctor pulled it over. She grabbed what looked like a probe to Dean and an industrial size tube of lube. She hooked her foot onto the exam table and pulled herself closer to it. “Okay Dean, just like your yearly exam, I need you to lie back and put your feet in the stirrups.”

He tracked his eyes back and forth from the probe to the tube sitting on the small table next to her. “Uh, where does that go?”

Dr. Visyak exhaled slowly and peered over her nose at him. “Dean, I know you read all the materials we gave you, because you have called the office at least half a dozen times. So, I know that you are aware that at two months, you have an internal sonogram.”

Dean glanced over at Ellen, who refused to look him in the eyes and instead was intently staring at the magazine. “Yeah, but I certainly didn’t think that it would be that big.” He grumbled.

“Well, Dean, you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t had things much larger than this in the very same place. Now just lay down, kid, and relax.”

He opened and closed his mouth as if to snap back at her, instead he chose to just lie back and do what she said. He could feel that his cheeks were burning so he draped his arm over his face.

“Now, then. Ellen could you switch off the lights?” 

The room darkened and Dean turned his face, still under his arm, to peek at the screen while he tried to ignore the sensations coming from his lower regions. A grainy image appeared on the screen. “Dean, when did you say the likely conception date was?” 

He closed his eyes to think. “Um, Friday, just before winter break, so December 21?”

Dr. Visyak hummed as she made markings and adjustments on the machine. “Do you want to hear it?”

Dean and Ellen both nodded, too overcome to speak. A soft whuph, whuph sound filled the small room. “Hang on.” The doctor interrupted. 

Dean propped himself up on his elbows, careful not to bend too much. “What is it? What do you mean, hang on?”

The doctor moved her wrist slightly and the sound seemed to grow an echo, only at a slightly different rate. “Is that?” Ellen asked, taking Dean’s hand in hers.

Doctor Visyak grinned. “Baby Winchester number two!”

Dean flopped back onto the table, his hand now covering his eyes in shock. “Two babies!”

  


He sat as his computer staring at the images the doctor’s office had emailed over, helpfully circling the little beans and labeling each one as baby A and baby B. To tell the truth, Dean could barely tell anything was in the pictures, but he had heard the heartbeats which Doctor Visyak had declared “good and strong sounding” and that was good enough for him for now. She had also sent them home with an armload of new information about multiples and the potential risks associated with them. He would probably not make it to the due date of September 27, their goal was to now make it to 35 weeks or longer. That would still put him a couple of months, at least, past graduation before he became too burdened to continue to go to classes and work every day. He thanked every God he could think of that he had Ellen and Bobby in his life to help. There was no way he would be able to think about doing this alone. 

He wished that he and his brother were talking again. The most communication the gave each other were terse emails and voice mails when they knew the other would not be able to answer the phone. Dean began to type out Sam’s email address for Stanford, making sure to attach the pictures first so he would not forget. “Hey, Bitch. I know you still don’t think I’m doing the right thing, or whatever, but here’s an update. I told you the last time I emailed you that the sonogram appointment was today, so I’m sending you the pictures. As you might have noticed, there are two photos. That’s not because the baby was in there doing their best Blue Steel and needed to get both sides, either. Twins, Sammy! Man, I wish you could have seen Ellen’s face when we found out! And don’t forget uncle Bobby, I think the old man actually shed tears when we showed the pictures to him. I just wish you were closer.” He read over the paragraph, first deleting the last line, only to retype again. He hit send and spun away from the small desk like it personally offended him, standing to get his jacket and head to the library to work on assignments for class. Refusing to wait around for a hope of a reply.

As he pulled into the parking spot in front of the library, and turned off the ignition, he noticed the missed call: Sam. He stared at the phone in his hand, contemplating if he had the nerve to call back right away (he didn’t) when his brother’s face suddenly filled up the screen. His thumb moved of its own volition to press the answer button. “Sam?”

Dean listened to the quiet pause on the other end for half a second and was about to hit end call when his brother finally broke the silence. “Dean—wait, don’t hang up.”

“Sam, I can’t listen to another lecture from you, right n—”

“—I’m sorry.” Sam cut in. Dean checked the screen to make sure who he was talking too before returning it to his ear. “Okay, I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, Ellen thinks I was an idiot about this, too.”

Dean smiled. “So, why the change of heart? I mean last week even, you were still all over my back on this.”

He could feel the squirm of his brother on the other side of the line, and the whisper of a woman that had to be his current girlfriend in the wait for an answer. “Ugh, I still think that he has a right to know, at least, and I know that I would want to know if I was him.”

“I’m going to hang up now.”

“Dean, just hear me out, okay?”

“Fine.”

“Okay, so we don’t agree about this, but it’s your decision to make. In fact, I even looked up the laws there in Kansas, just to make sure what legal standing you have.”

“And what did you find out, smart guy?”

Sam let out a deep breath, “You are required to notify the alpha, but if you are unmated and have a child, for the father to be put on the birth certificate, you have to prove that he is the sire. Like with a paternity test.”

“I know that, Sam. I’ve been doing my homework, too.” He didn’t hold back rolling his eyes since Sam was a thousand miles away.

“Yeah, I get that, but get this. Kansas is a total red state. If he’s not on the birth certificate, he has like no rights. I think it was to keep wealthy alphas from being forced to pay child support or something. If he’s not on the birth certificate, you don’t get child support, but he can’t sue for custody or whatever.”

Dean rubbed his other hand against his forehead. “Unless he establishes paternity, Sam.”

Dean could feel the face his brother was making at him. “Yeah, but since you’re not telling him, and you said yourself that you don’t exactly run in the same circles…”

“That’s what I’m hoping for Sam. Listen, I’m glad that you’re seeing my side on this, finally. But you’re aren’t really telling me anything I don’t already know.”

“I’m sorry.” Sam sighed. “I just, I’ve had to pull some volunteer hours at the free law clinic these last couple weeks. It’s really made me rethink a lot of things. Some of these people…that could have been us if Bobby and Ellen had not stepped up.” 

“We got lucky.” Dean rested his head against the steering wheel as he listened.

“We did. So, for now I’m just shadowing the lawyers. A day or two ago, there was this omega there, she just reminded me of you. Her partner and her had lived together for years, but he had never mated her, kicked her out when he found someone new, younger. You know, same old story. 

“Anyways, the lawyer, Anna, she’s an omega as well. She could tell that I, I don’t know, distrusted what was going on would be the best way to say it. She took me in the back and reamed me, just rips me a new one, that it was my job as a lawyer to be objective—to listen to ALL the facts and not make judgements ahead of time. Like I thought I was going to sent back to school with a failing grade. But she didn’t, we went back in and she tells that if I insert any commentary or forget to jot something down at all, that she will do exactly that. So, I just listen and write. 

“Turns out, this woman, the omega, she has a little girl, like three years old with this creep. Even though they weren’t mated, she did everything that she was supposed to do, everything that I’ve been pressuring you to do. Established paternity, which he did willingly at the time because they were doing good. When she was thrown out, the kid stayed with the dad because he had the stable home. She’s trying to get custody back, but that won’t happen if she can’t maintain the apartment she’s been living at. She can’t maintain the apartment if she gets fired for complaining about this guy at work that’s harassing her, and she’s terrified that it’s going to get worse one day. And you know how hard it is for you to get a job as an omega that’s almost finished with college. This woman has a GED and is about a buck twenty soaking wet. Too many employers are going to look at her and say she’s too big a liability.”

“What do you want me to say, Sammy? It sucks being an omega? Yes, sometimes it really does.”

“What I’m trying to say is it’s not on me to tell you to do anything. You’re a grown man. If this is what you want, I’ll back your play.”

“That’s the last thing I thought you’d say.”

“Might be. I'm not gonna lie to you, though. It goes against every fiber I got. I mean, truth is... You know, watching out for you... it's kinda been my job, you know? But more than that, it's... it's kinda who I am. You're not a kid anymore, Dean, and I can't keep treating you like one. Maybe I got to grow up a little, too. But... But I do know that if anybody can do it... it's you.”

“Thank you.” 


	7. Chapter Seven

Dean couldn’t believe how fast the semester and pregnancy flew by. A week before his finals, he scheduled his second ultrasound with Dr. Visyak. At home, he already had two cribs set up, and Bobby and Ellen had been buying out the baby stores from what he’d seen. They’ve been nice about not dumping it all in his apartment yet. He’d told them that he wanted to wait until he’s done with school first to concentrate on that, especially since Dr. Visyak said that he could end up on at least light bed rest with carrying twins. 

Bobby picked him up in the SUV, and Dean was glad for once that he wasn’t driving. The amount of water that he had to consume for this test was making him uncomfortable. 

As Bobby stood beside him to assist him into the seat, Dean asked, “Where’s Ellen? I thought she was coming to get me?”

Bobby hopped into his side and started the vehicle. “She had an emergency at the Roadhouse. I swear to god that Ash’s going to burn that place down one day. She was almost done when I left, so she’s meeting us there.”

Dean nodded, brushing the moisture from his eyes. “God damn hormones. Littlest thing sets off the waterworks.”

“Jo told me that you were upset in class the other day,” Bobby sucked on the side of his teeth with his tongue. 

Dean threw up his hands. “Really? My god, it was nothing! Over like a minute later.”

Bobby shrugged, “That’s not what I heard. Heard you were in the restroom for the better part of a half an hour. She couldn’t get you to come out.”

“So, this is why you are driving me? So you can interrogate me? I told you it was nothing all right! Let it go, old man.” Dean’s voice was brittle with frustration.

“Dean we’re not interrogating you. We were concerned that something happened. Besides, you know stress is bad for the babies.” He stared straight ahead at the road, but his tone had turned soft.

Dean’s eyes widened with fear and voice dropped. “Do you think that I hurt the babies? I mean I’m under a lot of pressure with school and being pregnant…what if I’m doing too much, Bobby?”

“Dean!” Bobby alpha voice threaded the comment, although he did not raise his voice. “Dean look here. You are doing regular check ups with Dr. Visyak, right?”

Dean nodded.

“And she said that everything looks good, so far. Textbook right?”

Dean slumped in his seat, his hands rounding on his belly. “Yes, Bobby.”

“So, I reckon, I’m not going to worry about anything like that unless Dr. Visyak gives me a reason to. You shouldn’t either.”

Dean nodded again. “Ugh, I hate this rollercoaster. I swear, it’s worse than…I don’t even know! I just want to be done with school right now so I can focus on them. We won’t have a lot of time, you know.”

Bobby turned into the clinic parking lot, “Did Dr. Visyak say anything more about bedrest at the last appointment?”

Dean rubbed the back of his neck. “Just the usual, that it was likely towards the end. I don’t know how long that gives us. She said she might have a better idea at this visit.”

With Dean’s extended belly, they couldn’t help the slower pace as they walked towards the front doors where Ellen was standing, waiting for them. 

Dean grabbed his surrogate mom in a hug. “He didn’t burn anything down, did he?”

Ellen stepped back, fishing a strand of hair from her mouth, and chuckling. “Not for lack of trying. I swear, between you, Jo, and Ash, I going to head for an early grave.”

“Sorry,” Dean mumbled, his head down as he walked. 

Ellen rubbed her hand on his lower back for a second to comfort him. “No, sweetie. It’s my job to worry about you guys. Besides, you’ve been a cake walk compared to those other two.”

Dean snorted, “I won’t tell Jo you said that.”

“You do, and they’ll never find the body.” Ellen squeezed her arm tight around his shoulder before dropping her hand to grab his.

The receptionist hung up the phone she had been talking on when they had approached and slid the glass partition open. “Hey, Dean. You here for your ultrasound?”

“Hi Tessa. Do I need to fill anything out?”

The pretty brunette beta smiled at him, “Not today. I got you all checked in. Someone will call you back in a minute. Just have a seat.”

Ellen steered them over to where Bobby had already managed to find a few chairs together. Dean looked through the tattered selection of outdated magazines that sat on the table in front of him. Two-year-old copies of O-Baby! and A/O Living seemed to be most of the titles, but he picked through until he found the least obnoxious sounding, a gardening magazine whose cover story was focused on the plight of bees. He ended up so interested in the article, he snagged it when the technician called them back. 

He got situated on the chair as the tech, Jesse, moved everything into place. “So, Dean, did you drink enough water today?” he asked as the computerized checklist appeared.

“Yep. Every drop.”

Jesse ticked the button on the screen and moved to the next question. “Have you gone to the bathroom today”

Dean grimaced, “No, and I would like to thank you guys for that special torture.”

“Believe me,” Jesse chuckled. “You are not the first one to tell me that. As soon as we are done, there’s a bathroom right next door.” 

The tech asked a few more questions while checking the boxes on the machine, then he excused himself and let them know that Dr. Visyak would be in momentarily to do the scan. Ellen squeezed his shoulder and Dean grabbed her hand in response. 

A knock on the door a few seconds later revealed the doctor. “Dean, looking good. Hey Ellen, Bobby.

Dean grinned at her, “Hi doc. Ready to start this hoedown?” 

“Sure am!” Dr. Visyak sat on the rolling stool and turned to face Dean. “So, final question. The last time I asked you about this, you were undecided. Have you made a decision about knowing the sex of the babies?”

Dean looked back and forth from Bobby to Ellen, who both nodded in encouragement. “I think—yes. Yes, I want to know.”

Dr. Visyak slid the few inches back to the machine and grabbed the gel. “Okay, no turning back now. Lift your shirt up and roll the top of your pants down like you did last time. Remember this is going to be cold.”

Dean hissed slightly as the gel made contact with his skin, but then gave a shaky smile to continue. She ran the wand over his swollen belly. “There’s baby number one. Spine and head look good.” She clicked buttons and made measurements as she talked. 

“Good heartbeat, two arms and two legs. Alright now for the money shot, let’s see what we can see. Ahh, there it is, baby one is a boy.”

A sound escaped Dean that he would deny to his dying day was a squeak, but he looked to Bobby whose eyes were glistening. “A boy.” He whispered as the doctor moved the wand to the other side of the belly. 

“There you are. You look fine too. Baby two is a bit smaller than their brother, but that’s very common, and they look to be well in range for where you are in the pregnancy for twins.” The clacking of the keys continued. “Everything looks good on her too.” 

Ellen spoke up, “Her?”

“Oh yes, this little lady is not shy at all. You’re going to have your hands full with this one.” Dr. Visyak finished the exam, wiping his stomach off and helping Dean into a sitting position. “Now, why don’t you use the bathroom and get yourself cleaned up, then meet me in exam room 3 for the rest of the visit.”

  


The rest of the appointment was a blur for Dean, his mind swirling around the fact that he was having a boy and a girl. Somehow, this ultrasound had made the whole pregnancy more real and he was half afraid he was going to have a panic attack right there in the doctor’s office.

Fingers snapped in front of his face, startling him. “Dean! You okay?” Ellen had crouched next to him and Bobby was behind her, crushing his hat in his hands.

Dean’s eyes were blown wide as he looked first at them then to the doctor, before dropping his eyes to his lap. “Sorry, just…um…freaked out a minute there.” 

Dr. Visyak hand stroked his arm soothingly, “Oh, honey, no worries. I couldn’t tell you how many times that happens. It’s totally normal.”

“Okay.” Dean gulped and tried to normalize his breathing. 

“Alright. Now, what I was saying. Technically the due date is now October 3, but that would be if there was only one baby. With twins, you rarely go completely full term. We are going to shoot for 37 weeks, but anything after 35 weeks is fine.”

“What if the babies come before that?” Ellen grip on Dean’s hand tightened as he asked the question. 

“Well, that all depends on how early, but any earlier than that is most likely going to require a significant stay in the NICU and some serious medical intervention.” Dr. Visyak held up her hand to stop the questions from coming. “That being said, Dean, you are looking very healthy and both babies are well within their targets and have looked great on all the scans. We are going to do everything we can to keep those babies cooking as long as we can. I’m glad that you told me that school ends next week. That will alleviate a great deal of stress from your body. Bobby assures me that you are strictly on desk duty now, bookkeeping and the like, correct.”

“Damn straight.” Bobby mumbled from his hovering stance over Dean.

“Good, as long as you can stay comfortable—I know—relatively speaking, you can work. From now on, the appointments are going to be every two weeks, and you have to call me if you have any symptoms, got it?”

“Yeah, I got it. I fricken hate desk duty, but if that’s what it takes, then I’ll do it.” 


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the comments, folks. A few more chapters for you. Don't worry, it's all written out.

The weeks rolled on, and soon school was out, and he was graduating and walking with his fellow classmates. Although not in the least bit ashamed of the pregnancy, especially when the teachers and other students already knew, it was sort of nice that the robe had effectively hid the growing bump. It felt good to be just one of the other students for that day. When he had petitioned to graduate and they told him that he would be graduating with at least cum laude honors and expected to make magna cum laude if his current grades held, he could have been knocked over with a feather. Now the crimson stole contrasted starkly against the blue robes. It had been so warm in the stadium, even with a thin, short sleeved dress shirt and linen pants like Ellen had suggested, he was sweating in the morning summer sun. Thank god, they knew not to hold the ceremony in the afternoon. The dean of his school, early childhood education, had finally neared the end of the alphabet and the ‘W’s and his row stood to file up to the stage. 

In the audience, he knew that Bobby, Ellen, Sam, and lots of other friends could see the picture of the Impala that he had glued to the mortarboard and knew that they would laugh about it. Jo had written “Clever Girl” on hers while Vic had deemed that all too juvenile for him and left it the traditional blank. When they all tossed them in the air at the end, he was going to be sorry when he could not recognize his from the thousand others out on the field. 

Finally, it was his turn to walk across. His name was called, and he walked forward, pausing at the dean to be handed the scroll and face front to let people take pictures. As he moved the tassel to the other side, he could hear the loud whistle that was unmistakably his brother over the sounds of the crowd and his face split into a grin. He did it, he was done with the part of his education he always feared the most. After the twins were born, and once the winter semester began, he could start his student teaching. The university had worked with him to accommodate the pregnancy and had secured a spot for him at Newton Elementary for his year under Principal Alistair Sharpe starting after the winter break. Hopefully, if it worked out well, it would lead to a permanent position.

  


Dean had needed to go into moderate bedrest by the beginning of August, so he had moved into Jo’s old room at Bobby and Ellen’s. Jo had left for medical school at UVA and Vic had joined the FBI like he had dreamed of, so the week after graduation they packed up a U-Haul and drove their meager belongings to Virginia. It was much quieter in the farmhouse than he had ever known it with Jo gone. Hopefully however, the babies would be out in little past a month and he would be chasing them around. The babies did not wait until the first week of October. In fact, Dean was awoken early on a Saturday in September by a strong cramp and the feeling of wetness spreading over the bed. He quickly dipped his hands under the sheets to feel the wetness and brought it back up to his face. A sigh of relief escaped as he saw it was clear liquid and not blood. The sun had barely started peeking over the horizon and there were no sounds in the house of anyone else awake yet. He knew that if he yelled for Ellen, she would wake up in terror. The problem was that he could not maneuver himself out of the bed by himself with such a large belly. His cell lay on the bedside table and he snatched it. He was halfway through a text message, when he realized that this was better done in a call, instead. He hit the button and prayed she would hear it to wake up. It went to voicemail, but he ended it quickly, pausing a second or two before dialing again. This time a groggy voice picked up on the second ring. “Dean? What’s wrong, baby?”

“El, you and Bobby need to get up and get down here. It’s go time.”

“Honey, are you sure? Are you having bad contractions?”

Dean hissed in a breath as another contraction hit, he checked the phone, barely 10 minutes from the last one. “Yeah, I think I must have slept through a lot of it. I woke up to a bad one and my water breaking.”

“Okay, I’ll be down in a minute to help clean you up and Bobby can get dressed. While he gets you situated in the car, I’ll throw some clothes on. You call Dr. Visyak while you’re waiting for us.”

  


The drive to the hospital took less than 15 minutes and Dr. Visyak was outside along with a nurse holding a wheelchair for Dean. Bobby heaved the pregnant man out of the low seats of the car, “God dammit, why didn’t I take the SUV instead of this low riding piece of crap?” he snarled under his breath. For all intents and purposes, Dean was his and Ellen’s son and the scent of pain and distress from the contractions was sending Bobby’s alpha into a spiral. He got Dean deposited into the wheelchair and Dean grabbed his arm, “Take a minute, Bobby, while you park the car. You have to calm down or they won’t let you in the delivery room with me, you hear.”

Bobby took a deep breath in through his mouth and let it out, nodding his head. “I hear. I’ll meet you guys inside.” 

The three women whisked Dean into the hospital and into the delivery rooms to hook him up to monitors and for Dr. Visyak to check his cervix. She waited until the next contraction was done before checking the opening. “Well, the good news is that the babies are in a good position, one has dropped into top of the canal. But it’s probably going to be a long day. You are only at five centimeters and you still have to get to ten. That does give us time to do the epidural if you feel you need to. You weren’t sure at the last few appointments, so if you want to change your mind, now’s the time.”

Dean nodded, already starting to sweat. “How long do I have to decide?”

“We have to do it before you are at seven centimeters, but we would have to get the anesthesiologist here to do it. I can’t. So, let’s say 20 minutes, okay?”

Dean nodded through a contraction, attempting to listen and continue his breathing at the same time. Ellen held his hand through it and answered for him. “He understands. We’ll tell you shortly, doctor.”

The morning progressed slowly. Dean had decided against the drugs, but mainly because he knew that once the epidural was in place, it could slow down the process. So, he walked the halls with Bobby and Ellen, let the doctor and nurses check on him whenever they needed to, and they waited it out. 

Bobby was in charge of the phone and notifications, with Jo and Sam on opposite coasts and back in school, neither could be there in person. It wasn’t until early afternoon that finally the doctor declared Dean ready to push. It seemed that the active part of the labor process took hours, but Henry Tyler Winchester was born at 137pm and his sister, Emma Grace, a few minutes later at 145pm, September 7. Bobby snapped pictures of the blond boy with the bright blue eyes and the darling girl whose wisps of black hair barely covered her head, her eyes green and wide like her omega daddy’s. 

  



	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Talk of sexual harrasment

By the time the winter break was over and school kids were returning to the classroom, Dean was both anxious to start his new student teaching position and sorrowful to have to leave his precious babies all day with Ellen and the help of a family friend, Alfie. Dean arrived at Newton Elementary a half an hour before the students were due to arrive, as Principal Sharpe had instructed him, and checked himself quickly in the reflection of the windows as he walked in. he may not have felt the part of elementary school teacher, grades k through 3, but at least he looked it. 

As he had been told, the school’s front door was unlocked and there was a secretary already at their post. Dean immediately noticed that the young man was not giving off scent, as if he was wearing blockers, and worried that he had made a mistake by not wearing them. Dr. Visyak had cautioned him that in the first year of their lives, the children bonded better if you did not block, and he had never really though much of it before. Now, he wasn’t so sure. He cleared his throat and gave a wave to the man when he looked up. “Hey, I’m…um…Dean Winchester. The new student teacher—” 

A man clapped him on the back before he could finish. An alpha. Well, at least that answered the question about whether the teachers wore blockers. “Winchester!” The man with the cold smile shot his hand out. “I’m Principal Sharpe, call me Alistair.” Dean was steered into a small office with heavy wooden doors behind the secretary. “Don’t worry about Aaron, you’ll meet him soon enough. We have a lot to talk about.”

Dean placed his satchel on the floor next to a chair and sat down on it. “Thank you, Mr. –um…Alistair. I’m sure I have a lot to learn here. Can I say that I’m so glad that your school was able to accommodate my special circumstances and not start until now.”

Alistair waved him off as he sat on the edge of the desk, directly in front of Dean, “Nonsense, people like you are always having something come up and I knew that we would have a position now just as easily as the fall.”

“People like me, sir?” Dean cocked his head, not sure if he heard him correctly. 

The principal scoffed, his leg now edged close enough to brush ever so slightly against Dean’s. “Omegas, Winchester. I know it’s not PC to say so, but between your heats and running off and having kids, you guys don’t have the most reliable reputation.”

“Of course,” Dean lowered his eyes slightly and felt his cheeks burn. 

“Don’t take it like that, you know it’s true! I mean, after all, what were your, what did you call them? Oh yes, special circumstances?” The grin on the principal’s face was nauseating. Dean had never seen anyone smile so wide that he saw all their teeth. 

Dean stared defiantly at the principal, refusing to answer. 

“Oh, you’re going to be a tough nut to crack, hmmm. Well, don’t worry. We’ll knock you off that high horse of yours and give you a taste of what it’s out there. In the end, you’ll be my perfect little omega bitch.” The grin that Alistair Sharpe gave Dean was predatory, hungry, and full of violence. The darkness in the power that this alpha radiated was something he hadn’t experienced before, and it made him tremble. He could smell the start of the scent of fear and anxiety rolling from him as Sharpe blatantly scented him. Dean couldn’t escape the office quick enough. 

  


Dean tried to appeal to his placement counselor, but there were just no other positions available for him. Alistair Sharpe had a reputation as, well a dick, but not enough to remove him from the school or the program, just that he was a harsh educator. And no other omegas had ever made any allegations like the ones Dean was making, at least according to his record. Unless Dean had proof of the man’s behavior, it would be Dean’s word against Sharpe’s. 

  


After the first day had been spent doing administrative tasks, and in close contact with Alistair, Dean was excited to get into a classroom. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, he would shadow the kindergarten class, and on Thursdays and Fridays—the second graders. Leaving one day a week for meetings with Alistair and other administrators as well as help Aaron in the school’s office. While Dean loved the teaching, especially the kindergarten class, he truly hated his job. Sharpe made everything an issue. Always with an undertone that Dean was less than capable because of his subgender. Even worse was that he would linger close to Dean, much closer than was strictly necessary, touch him in a way that was seemingly innocuous, but just a little too long or a little too—off. Every day, Dean would leave wanting to hurl, and felt the need to shower and change before he left school to pick up the kids. But every day he went back, telling himself that it was only for a year. 

Sam’s advice, of course, was to report him. But Dean felt that Sharpe had not technically done anything wrong, at least physically. Everything was brushed off as a misunderstanding by the school district. Sharpe backed off for a few days, but soon enough he was at it again. His advisor at school was beginning to think that Dean was making too much of things. So, he went on with the year, dealing with the thinly veiled remarks and the uncomfortable contacts because he knew that he was on the verge of being labeled as a troublemaker himself. He knew that his sleep and appetite was beginning to suffer but knew that if he just got through the year, he could transfer somewhere else and be done with it. 

If Alistair had not been bad enough, the school custodian Azazel, was even worse. A beta with a complex, bad breath, and eyes that reflected yellow in the fluorescent lights of the school hallways. Azazel liked to corner Dean when he could, taunt him in the hallways. Dean had found his desk and locker messed with on more than one occasion and took to carrying anything important in his satchel. The only ally he felt he had in the school was Aaron. Aaron, as it turned out, was another omega. He had started scent blocking, he said, because of his mother’s weird beliefs (don’t ask, Aaron told one night over beers) and after he had started at the school he continued once he saw how the principal treated omegas.

“How come you don’t report Sharpe? You must have seen a lot.”

Aaron took a swig of his beer, “Dean, no. Alistair is fucking connected, powerful. I try to take him down, and I’ll never be able to find another job at a school in Kansas.” 

“There’s got to be something.” Dean took a bite of the Biggie Burger in front of him. 

“I keep in touch with a couple previous omegas, and I’m documenting things. But it’s going to take a long ass time. You’ll be long gone by the time he gets caught.”

Dean shook his head, “It’s so fricken annoying. He knows right where the line is, that if he crossed it, he’d be gone. And he just parks in front of it. Every fucking day, he’s like two inches away from me as he talks, but not touching! If he does touch me, it’s the elbow or the shoulder, so all he has to say is that it was appropriate for a mentor to put his hand on his protegee’s shoulder, that it was innocuous. That’s what he told my counselor, by the way, that I was his protegee and that it hurt him to hear that I was saying such horrible things about our relationship.”

“Unbelievable!” Aaron shook his head and took a bite of food. 

“He’s got the whole fucking system wired.” 


	10. Chapter Ten

By the time the spring term ended, Dean had lost fifteen pounds from stress, and he had bags under his eyes that could travel to Italy and back. But at least he was done with for the summer. Now, he would have nearly two and a half months with his babies without the looming specter of Alistair Sharpe or Azazel. 

Sam flew out to visit for the Fourth of July, followed by Victor and Jo. The twins grew like the weeds children often are, teeth grew in and hair grew out. Henry’s hair had darkened to a dark blond while Emma’s head was still barely covered by just a few black strands. His friend, Alfie assured Dean that he had seen the same thing with his cousins, and every single one that had been bald now had more hair than they knew what to do with. They were beginning to develop personalities as well. Emma preferred the sounds of her Dad’s music and the Impala’s engine, so much so that if Dean needed to get her to go to sleep, he could play one of his old tapes on low and she would knock out. Henry was very studious, curious about everything. He was taking longer than his sister to speak, but the pediatrician couldn’t find anything medically wrong and they all felt that he would speak when it was his time. 

By the time fall rolled back around, Dean was excited that the twins would be celebrating their first birthday. The whole family was flying in for the weekend, Ellen was even closing the Roadhouse for the occasion so that they could use it as their party headquarters. The only thing dampening his enthusiasm, was that the week before that, school started back up. Dean had not mentioned to Ellen and Bobby how intense the harassment was, but it had affected both of them. Both businesses had been harassed by inspectors ever since Dean had made his first complaint and he was well aware who was behind it. Sharpe’s comments were less ‘thinly veiled’ these days and more threatening, albeit always in private. 

Dean also dreaded the idea that Sam would do something outrageous that would backfire onto him, like showing up Friday afternoon at Dean’s school and wanting words with Alistair. Luckily, Ellen had assured him that this was not going to happen and emailed Dean a copy of the itinerary for his own piece of mind.

  


The first day of school started early for Dean. Besides getting Henry and Emma ready for the day, he had lost the rhythm of the morning and getting to work. Too many thoughts squeezed into his head to taunt him about what would happen after he walked into the school’s doors. By the time he made it through traffic and into the school office, Alistair was already in a meeting with a new teacher. That made Dean breathe a little easier, since he didn’t have to face him right away. 

“How’s the new guy?” Dean leaned over and asked Aaron as he pulled papers out of his satchel. 

Aaron looked to the door and back at Dean. “Two new guys, actually. One is the new kindergarten teacher replacing Mrs. Casey. I think his name was Garth. I’m sure you’ll get to know him though if you are still doing K this year.”

Dean scrunched his eyebrows together, “I think so. No one has said anything else to me.”

“Anyways, the other is a very chatty redhead. She’s going to do the new computer stuff for the fifth and sixth graders. I’m sure she told me her name, but honestly, I’ve heard auctioneers talk slower than her.”

Dean chuckled and sat as his desk, booting up his own workstation, intent on slogging through the backlog of e-mails and other crap that had piled up during the summer. At least the students didn’t start until the following week Dean thought as he fought through the mountain of work (most of it totally useless) until he found one with a heading marked “Classroom Assignment.” He clicked on it and sat up, intently reading it to himself. Although he graduated in early childhood education, and technically was qualified to teach any elementary grade, he had focused on k through 3rd. Most of his class had picked a group to focus on, since it was an entirely different set of skills to teach first graders than it was to teach 5th graders, or high school kids even. But as he sat there reading the email, there it was, his assignment for the term—4th and 6th grade. How had he not received this email on his private email at home? Change in assignments were always supposed to be given at least four weeks prior so that the person had a chance to petition to change it. Now the time for that had passed and there was no way to not accept it and stay in the program. He clicked on the detail button where it said who all the email had been sent to. The email at Newton Elementary was listed, as well as his advisor, but his personal email had the wrong domain name. He knew this was on purpose, since the elementary school emailed him things to his personal account weekly last term, sometimes daily depending on the circumstances. 

“What’s the matter?” Aaron asked from the other desk. “You got some major anxiety sweat going on.”

Dean leaned forward and hissed, “That son of a bitch changed my assignments to 4th and 6th graders, but it looks like he ‘accidentally’ sent the notification to a bad email, so I never got notified. I freaking can’t stand nine-year olds. They are worse than teenagers to me.”

Dean and Aaron sat back in their respective chairs and pretended to be working as the office door opened, Alistair escorting the two new teachers out. “Dean! So glad you’re here. I’d like you to meet our two new teachers.”

Dean stood and approached warily. “Hey.”

“Dean meet Garth. He’s taking over for Mrs. Casey, now that she won’t be coming back.” Alistair grinned at Dean, showing all his teeth like a shark. “That’s right, you worked with her, didn’t you? Dean is one of our student teachers here. Last year, he helped out in the Kindergarten class.”

“And the second-grade class taught by Mr. Holloway.” Dean fiddled with the buttons on his shirt. He was sure that this was going somewhere bad, but he couldn’t see what yet.

“Of course. Mr. Holloway. Not many alphas teaching second grade, I bet he loved having you in there—helping out.”

Dean knew the only thing saving him right now was that he had a decent control over his scent, because he wanted to punch the bastard right in his smug mouth. Mr. Holloway was nearly sixty and teaching children was his joy. Dean had loved working with him, because it was someone that he could aspire to be like. He was patient with the children, he had listened to them, talked to them like they were his equals. His wife, Doris, was lovely as well. To have Alistair insinuate such things not just about Dean, but about this kind old gentleman, had him balling his fist at his side. Through a clenched smile, Dean gritted out. “Mr. Holloway doesn’t need any help from me, Alistair. He’s got those kids eating out of his hands.”

“Of course,” Alistair placated; his voice as oily as his scent. He gestured to his other side. “Lest we forget, this lovely lady here is Celeste Bradbury. Since we received that grant last year and updated the computer room, the district saw fit to hire a computer teacher for the older students.”

The short redhead waved but kept her mouth shut in the tense atmosphere. 

“Well, I have actual work to do before school starts. Dean be sure to meet with your new teacher assignments today or tomorrow. I’m so glad that you didn’t object to us changing you up this semester. Your talents were so wasted last term.” Sharpe turned and swept into his office without noticing if any of them wanted to speak to him or had any questions.

The redhead finally broke the silence. “What a douche!” 

“You have no idea.” Dean slumped back into his seat. “Celeste, right? Well I guess I’ll get to know you as I’m apparently student teaching the 6th graders twice a week.”

She held up a finger to him, “Okay, first of all, it’s Charlie. Secondly, why haven’t you reported that stuff to the school? That would not have tolerated that where I come from.”

Dean snorted, “Yeah, where’s that? Because my school said that I have no case, it’s just my word against his. And guess what? Alistair Sharpe is fricken old money or something with fingers in everything, because as soon as I said something you want to know what happened? The county inspectors started showing up at both my parents businesses looking and nitpicking for violations. Now they both run pretty tight ships, but if you look long and hard enough at something, you’ll find a chink. Ellen almost had to shut down the Roadhouse.”

The tall, lanky beta spoke up, “He can’t do that!” 

“But he does. Look, Garth, right?” Dean waited for the taller man to nod in confirmation to his name. “Aaron and I are pretty much the only omegas that work here, and it’s because of Sharpe.”

“And Azazel!” Aaron piped in from the other desk.

“That’s right, and Azazel the janitor whose just as bad. Mrs. Casey was a third omega, but she told me at the end of last year that she found a better position at another school. One that had dozens of omegas working there, so she felt comfortable going there.”

“But what about the other staff, the teachers?”

Dean shrugged. “Most are betas and can’t smell worth a damn, so they don’t notice. The few alphas that do work here either don’t care because we’re just omegas and they are thinking it anyway. The ones that would, like Mr. Holloway, they don’t seem to do anything in front of, so they have no idea.”

Garth interrupted, “Hey, I’m a beta and I didn’t need a nose to figure that out!”

“And quite the nose you have!” Charlie joked. 

“Ha ha, I’m just saying that maybe they see more than you give them credit for.”

“Maybe, hasn’t stopped anything from happening though.” Dean rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. 

Charlie leaned forward, conspiratorially, “Maybe they just don’t know what to do.” 


	11. Chapter Eleven

Dean met with his counterparts later the same day, a beta named Andy Gallagher that taught fourth grade. He couldn’t help but notice that that man had a vague scent of a few too many joints over the weekend. Dean hoped that the man wouldn’t be affected when it came time to teach, but overall seemed to be a decent guy. It was too bad the old woman teaching the sixth grade gave him the creeps. Mrs. Carrigan with her false cheer and ‘fudging’ not-curse words. He hated interacting with her last year when they just had to pass in the hallways or meetings. He always got the feeling that she wanted to eat him. At least the two new teachers were friendly, Charlie had declared him her new BFF by the third day. That prompted Dean to invite the both of them to the twin’s birthday the following weekend. 

Sam was flying in late Friday, with Jo and Victor arriving the next morning. The house was full already, but even with the extra people sleeping at hotels, it seemed that you couldn’t turn around without bumping into someone. Dean had finally gotten Emma cleaned up after a disastrous breakfast with oatmeal when the doorbell rang. He opened it with Emma in his arms to find Charlie with an enormous bouquet of balloons waiting there. The squeal from the redhead made Emma squeal in return, making Dean pinch the bridge of his nose with his free hand. 

Charlie winced. “Sorry, man, but she is adorbs. This is Emma?” she held her hand out and touched the baby’s cheek. 

Dean hitched her up and opened the door wider for her to come in. “Yeah, this is little Emma. I think my brother has Henry outside somewhere. Hey, thanks for coming early. It has been a mad house all morning.”

“No problem, Sunshine. Now, where do you want these balloons?” 

Dean waved a hand vaguely towards the corner. “Just put them over there somewhere. We’ll have to take them to the Roadhouse later.” 

Charlie let the bouquet go in the corner. “Let me take her for a little while, Dean.” She held out her arms to the girl and the baby leaned over to go straight to her. 

Chuckling as he passed her off, “She normally doesn’t take to strangers quite that easily.”

“Well, she must know that I’m her auntie Charlie.” She made a funny face at the baby and Emma laughed. “So, give me the rundown, who all is here?”

Dean steered her through the house, introducing her to everyone. When Emma saw Jo, she immediately flung out her arms to her and cried, “Aw Jo!”

Jo took the baby from Charlie, and Dean and Charlie grabbed a drink and sat outside. “So, Dean. You’re a reasonably attractive man.”

He sputtered out his drink, “Thanks?”

“Pssht, don’t worry, you don’t have the equipment for the team I play for.”

“Oh.” Dean blushed as he took a drink.

“Anyways, as I was saying, a reasonably attractive man, omega…clearly have great genes for those two beautiful babies.”

“Where is this going, Charles?”

She bumped her shoulder into him. “What are you doing still here in Podunk, Kansas?”

“Well, that was not the question I was expecting.”

She grinned at him, “I mean it, the alphas around here…they are like a couple decades behind the times when it comes to treating an omega as an equal. You think the school is bad, wait until you try dating as a single parent.”

Dean ducked his head. “Yeah, well, that’s not happening for a little while still. At least until I’m done and become a full-fledged teacher. I just have too much on my plate right now.”

“Look, I just don’t want to see you get hurt again. You kind of told me about, you know, the guy, and I could tell it still bothers you.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “You did suspiciously leave out his name, though. Are you worried that I would look him up and do something?”

“What? No! I didn’t tell anyone his name.” Dean rushed the words out.

“Why not?”

“Because, Charlie.” He stood up and paced. 

“Sorry, man, sit back down with me. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Dean sat back down slowly, although with more distance between them than there was before. 

They sat in silence for a moment until Charlie spoke, “Her name was Dorothy.”

Dean turned towards her; his eyebrows pulled together. “Who?”

“The omega that broke my heart. The first time I admitted to my family that it was strictly the ladies for me. As a beta, they expected me to be with a man, subgender be damned, that way there could at least be children.”

Dean gripped the bottle between his hands. “How’d they take it?”

Charlie shrugged, “Not well. It was the beginning of my senior year in high school and Dorothy was a year older. I had gotten into CalPoly and my parents threatened to cut off the tuition they had promised me. There are not a lot of beta scholarships out there, you know. Almost all of them were for alphas because everyone loves an alpha or omegas because people are trying to help them get a leg up and succeed. There was no way I could have gone if my parents pulled the plug.”

“I’m sorry.” Dean slumped his shoulders, thinking of his own father and how it would have been with Dean’s predicament.

Charlie nodded, her voice shaky, “Turned out, I didn’t have to worry after all. About a week later, my parents were coming to get me at school, because I was on lock down you know. Nobody showed up. Finally, the principal gave me a ride home. She offered to stay with me at the empty house until they came home, but I told her to go home. I fell asleep on the couch waiting for them to come home, but instead two police officers showed up around midnight. My last memories of my parents and I were of us fighting all that week.”

Dean put his arm around her and squeezed her tight. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry.”

Charlie nodded into his chest, sniffling, “I want to finish, I haven’t really told this to anyone in a really long time. So, like two weeks after the funeral, I’m trying to navigate through school, you know keeping my grades up so I can still go to college like they really wanted me to do. Dorothy tells me she’s taking off. She wants me to come with her, that I have nothing left to hold myself there anyway. That she’s got a gig up the coast in Washington State the next week and needs to get going. I refused, but I really liked her, I mean at the time I would have said loved her, but I couldn’t just leave my house where I grew up, drop out of school, and ride off into the sunset on her motorcycle. As much as I wanted to get away from all the painful memories I had, I needed to be near them for a little while longer. Dorothy couldn’t understand. She said that it was because I was a beta, I would never feel anything like the love she felt. That betas were stunted, dwarfed in their emotions.”

Dean whistled, “Damn, Charlie! I don’t even know what to say!”

She chuckled darkly, “Yeah, well, I know how to pick them. Relationship didn’t last after that, as you can imagine.”

“Why did you tell me this?” He rolled the bottle between his hands as he stared straight ahead.

She scooted over and bumped him with her hip, “So you know you’re not alone in this, dummy. Not every love story is like Jo’s over there where she meets the love of her life freshman year. Most of us get our hearts broken, break a few hearts ourselves. Then we dust ourselves off and move on.”

“I have moved on from baby daddy, trust me.”

“Okay, fine, I believe you.” She rolled her eyes and took a long pull from her bottle. “So, what do you think it’s going to take to take down Alistair Sharpe?”

  


After the party was over, and his family went home, Dean could feel the hole in his heart again. He ignored it as he cleaned up the dishes, he ignored it as he checked on the kids while they slept. He did not pretend to ignore it as he googled James and Amelia Novak. He didn’t do it very often, but enough to know that the man seemed happy with his mate. The alpha creative director of the Novak corporation. The first article listed was a birth announcement from two months ago. He didn’t click the articles to read them anymore, hadn’t since that second month after Dean realized he was carrying. He closed out the tabs once again and cleared his browser history. He took a long drink from his bottle of beer, then closed his eyes and leaned his head onto his desk. “What the hell am I doing?"


	12. Chapter Twelve

The first week of actual students was always stressful. The sixth-grade class on Mondays and Tuesdays posed the most challenge for him, eleven and twelve-year-old kids, some of whom were already presenting. More than half of the little turdlings becoming defiant as hell. Mrs. Carrigan coddled the boys and the alphas while ignoring the females and the ones that had presented as betas. The one or two unlucky enough to have presented as omega, heaven help them. Dean attempted to help them as much as he could, he knew that he could not count on the school administration to help him out. At least they had two hours of computer class on Tuesdays.

Charlie kicked Mrs. Carrigan out the first week, claimed that the classroom was hers and told the old woman to take a break and smoke one of her weird clove cigarettes or something. On the second week, she told him that while she was snooping through the school’s server, she had found some files that were being routed directly to Alistair Sharpe’s personal computer and she was trying to investigate it. From what he had already seen of her skills, she was frightening when it came to hacking into various systems. All Dean could do now was wait until Charlie found something, not that he trusted that anything would happen. Alistair Sharpe seemed to be untouchable from everything that Dean could find out before they tried to shut down Ellen and Bobby’s businesses. 

It wasn’t until the fourth week of school that Charlie found something. Andy had him grading geography tests late Wednesday, but he wasn’t complaining if he wasn’t working in Mrs. Carrigan’s class. Charlie slipped in the side door, interrupting Andy as he went through that week’s math. “Excuse me, Mr. Gallagher, could I speak to Mr. Winchester for a moment please? I’m having trouble with a mutual student.” Her smile was tight on her face, and her voice seemed a pitch or two higher than Dean normally heard it, but if Andy noticed, he didn’t say anything.

“Sure. Dean, you want to have a word with Miss Bradbury in the hallway?”

He was already out of his chair at the desk and halfway to her, when he nodded at the teacher. When he reached his friend, she latched onto his arm and dragged him through the door with much more force than he could imagine. 

“Charlie—Charlie, slow down! What the hell is going on?” He pulled his arm free as soon as they were in the hallway. 

She chewed on her thumb as she paced in a small circle in front of him. “I want to tell you—no, I need to tell you something important. But I can’t do it.”

Dean threw his hands into the air. “Okay! What the hell!”

She leaned her face in close to him and hissed through clenched teeth, “I can’t tell you here, Dean.”

He squinted his eyes and cocked his head to look at her, but as his eyes widened, she cut him off. “The student that we’ve been having an issue with, it’s a real problem now.” She overenunciated each word, all the while looking directly in his eyes.

“Ok—ay.” He nodded attempting to act casual, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “What do you propose we do about it?”

“Well, you were coming over later to shower and get ready for that date, RIGHT? Why don’t we discuss it then? Just come over straight after class is out.” Her words were careful and more…formal than he was used to from her.

“Riiiight, that date with—Lisa.” He matched eye contact with Charlie, and she nodded almost imperceptibly. “You did promise to help me look my best.”

“I have to get back to class, my free period is almost up. See you later.” She waved him off with a Vulcan salute and Dean shot a text off to Alfie that he would be late picking up the kids that night before he entered Andy’s classroom and went back to grading. Not that he could concentrate on it. 

  


As a student teacher, he was not required to do bus duty daily, but he knew that if he tried to leave the parking lot immediately, he would get stuck in the crush. Normally he would use this time to shower in the boy’s locker room and clean up, but Charlie’s cryptic message earlier had wigged him out. Instead he sat at the desk and checked his email. He smelled Alistair before he felt him, close against his back, much too close to be professional. “Dean, I thought you’d be out of the office by now. Don’t you normally shower or something before you leave?”

Dean tried to keep his scent under control as his hands clenched over the keyboard. How had Sharpe known that? He calmed his breathing down and answered him as professionally as he could. “I sometimes do, yes. But I’m—headed to the gym and I didn’t want to shower again, you know.”

“Mmmm, yes. Delicate skin like yours, I’m sure it would start to chafe if you showered too much.”

Dean knew that he was starting to stress sweat, and the aroma was going to bleed through. He kept his mouth shut though and prayed that he could get away soon. 

“The janitor must be using some kind of new cleaner. Have you noticed, Dean? Smells like mandarin oranges and those white flowers I see all over the south, I can’t think of what they’re called.”

“I haven’t noticed, Alistair.” The side of Dean’s jaw was starting to flex in and out as he ground his teeth shut.

“Of course.” Alistair murmured, a hand now heavy on Dean’s shoulder almost as if holding him there. “It makes me want to find an orange and just bite down into it.”

Dean logged out of his terminal and stood with his satchel in his hand. He could smell the oily, rank scent of Sharpe’s arousal and he needed to get out. “Sorry, Alistair, but like I said, I’m meeting a friend at the gym, and I don’t want to make them late.”

“Of course, Dean. I’ll see you again soon.” Sharpe waved his fingers on the one hand and sauntered into his office as Dean rushed out the school’s doors to get out of the cloying atmosphere. He would never be happier than he would be to get away at that moment. 

  


By the time he made it to Charlie’s apartment, his nerves were shot. He checked his phone and confirmed that he was still a month from a heat, so nothing could explain his irritability and the restlessness that he had been experiencing the past day or two. It was just like his normal pre heat symptoms. He was going to hate to call the omega clinic if it went on for a few more days. He turned off the car and headed inside. Charlie opened the door, a phone in the other hand as she ordered a pizza. She waved him inside and slammed the door shut behind him. She threw the phone down on the couch and went to grab a beer. He watched as she flited around without speaking to him until he couldn’t take it any longer. “Charlie—” She ignored him as she puttered around, moving the laptop to the coffee table, and grabbing a beer for him as well. “Charlie!” He shouted to get her attention.

She stilled, “Dean, have a little patience, please. I will explain everything.” She went back to her manic puttering. 

Dean pointed to the bathroom, “Mind if I clean up then? I didn’t take a shower at school and I need to get that stink off me.”

She gaped at him, wide eyed. “Yes, yes, you need to do that.” She grabbed his arm and steered him towards the bathroom. 

He wondered about her strange behavior as he washed off in the shower. Everything around him seemed to be going wonky and end over end. He heard the knock on the door as he finished, “Pizza’s here!” and threw the sweatpants he had in his bag on. Charlie was sitting on the couch powering through a slice when he came back in. “You could try chewing that, Charles.” She looked up at him, cheeks puffed with food as she swallowed hard. 

“Dean!” She said around the mouthful of food. 

He flopped onto the couch next to her. “Charlie, what in the hell is going on? You go all dime store spy novel at school and now you can barely look at me.”

“It’s not you, sweetie. I just—ugh.” she put her plate down on the table and wiped her hands before turning to him. She grabbed his hands. “I found something and…you’re really not going to like it.”

Dean head shook a fraction as he framed a response, “What are you talking about?”

She folded her lips into her mouth tight before blowing out again. “There are cameras in the school.”

“Okay, well that makes sense these days, I guess.”

“Dean, no, if that was all there was, it wouldn’t be a big deal. They are everywhere though—the halls, the classrooms, the showers.”

“The what—the showers!” He stood, jerking away from her.

“Sit, Dean. We need to talk about this.”

“How—how do you know they are in the showers?”

“I have seen way more of you than I ever wanted, Dean. The tattoo is nice, though.”

Dean scrubbed his hand down his face. “What the fuck?” 

“I know. God, I wish I didn’t, but I know. He’s watching you, Dean. Like all the cameras that that show you go straight to his personal computer. I can map your movements from the minute you drive into the parking lot in the morning to when you go home at night. And not just you, either, there’s a couple of others he keeps his eyes on. I don’t know what he’s up to yet, but you need to be careful.”

He paced in front of the couch, shaking his hands out at his sides. “Ugh, what would he want with me? I’m nobody, just a single dad that got into college by the skin of my teeth.”

“You are also a very handsome, unmated omega. Yes, you have children, but I think that a man like Alistair Sharpe doesn’t care much about any children you had from another alpha before him.”

“You think he would hurt them?” He spun around and faced her.

“If it came down to it, I think he would be capable of doing just about anything to get what he wants. And those camera feeds tell me that it’s you that he wants.”

Dean grabbed his bag and jacket from the chair that he had thrown him them on. “Look, Charlie, thanks for telling me this—but I gotta go.” He barely stopped as he rushed out the door and hurled himself down the stairs towards his car. By the time he reached Bobby and Ellen’s house, he had calmed down slightly, enough that he wasn’t pouring out flight pheromones at least. It was still early in the evening, so only Alfie was there with the twins. The minute that he could see that they were safe in his family’s house, he calmed more. He scooped Henry up and bounced him into the kitchen, intent on making dinner since he had not eaten at Charlie’s. Once he had time to recover from the initial shock of her words, he called her to not only let her know that everyone was all right, but to plan. The first thing was that she would meet him at his place in a few days to strategize. 


	13. Chapter Thirteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that earns the warnings. This is not a nice chapter. Kidnapping, rape, human trafficing

Dean awoke just before sunrise burning up. He stumbled into the bathroom and guzzled a glass of cool water straight from the tap and was on his second before he realized it. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, glassy eyes, sweaty, his clothes were already starting to itch, he felt at least a degree or two hotter than normal. He called the school’s voicemail and left notice for heat leave, before he texted Bobby, who was always up with the sun. Someone needed to come and take the children for a few days before passing back out in bed. By the time the reply came, only a few minutes later, he was already stroking himself off, hard and fast. He dozed off once again after he came, weakly wiping it off with a discarded tee shirt. 

He checked the time when he awoke, two hours later and the symptoms of a bad heat were ramping up again, fast. This was harsher than his normal cycle. As soon as he finished with his second wave, he stumbled over to his dresser to check his meds. He counted out the suppressants and looked at the date filled on the bottle, he was not off schedule. He had noticed that these tablets broke apart slightly easier than the last bottle. He seemed to think that they were larger too. He googled how to identify a tablet on his laptop and put in the markings that were on the tablets. He ran back into the bathroom and puked when he saw that they were not suppressors at all, but heat inducing tablets for people who were having trouble cycling regularly. 

He made sure the apartment was locked tight, and the blinds were all drawn. Anyone looking in would think no one was home. He could tell that Bobby had already been by to take the children, there was a few packs of Gatorade in the fridge when he looked, and sandwich makings. Not to mention, protein bars and peanut butter. He grabbed a Gatorade and a protein bar and went back to the bedroom to crash, vaguely remembering that he should call Charlie and tell her to reschedule. He phone wasn’t on the bedside table, though. He must have carried it into the kitchen when he went in there and left it, now though, he just wanted to eat and get a quick nap in before it all hit again. He would call her when he woke up. 

  


When he woke up again, the first thing he noticed was the smell. The bed did not smell right, he opened his eyes and blearily looked around. He tried to jerk upright when he did not recognize the space, that was when he noticed that his hands were tied tight above his head. He thanked the gods that the fear he was feeling was overriding any wave of arousal from the heat. 

There was the sound of a door opening and closing behind him. The unmistakable scent of Alistair Sharpe in the room. “Good you’re awake.”

“Alistair! What the fuck is going on here? You can’t get away with this. Whatever you think you’re going to do, I’ll fucking end you.”

Alistair strolled along the bed, stroking up Dean’s bare leg that was also tied. “My beautiful Dean. I am going to get away with it, because by the end of this you’re going to be begging me to knot you. A needy little knot slut like you in the midst of a powerful heat. I know, I could smell you in the next room. And when I knot you, I’m going to put my bond bite on your neck. Once that happens, nothing can separate us.”

Dean stared at him in disgust. So much of what the man said was true, a hard heat would have an omega crying out for an alpha’s knot, that’s why he had a few great toys, and maybe a couple people he could call if it got really bad to give him a real live knot. As far as mating went, it was much stronger and nearly unbreakable if done in heat if the omega wasn’t taking a claiming inhibitor. Unfortunately, Dean’s inhibitor was in his suppressants which had been replaced for god know how long. If he was bitten now, there was no doubt it would take. There were some cases of the mate not surviving the other’s death afterwards. Even if he would want to dispute it, he would be alone for the rest of his life. He would not even be able to get aroused or have children by anyone other than his mate. 

Sharpe started talking again while Dean plotted his demise in his head. “Now, I know what you’re thinking, Dean. That you hate me, you would never, blah, blah, blah. But you see, in the position you’re in now, you can’t touch yourself, can’t relieve yourself as the waves of heat flare over you. You know what they say about induced heats, they are relentless. You almost have to have an alpha present to get through them. And the farther away from the natural cycle the worse. How long until you were supposed to beg for a knot, a couple months at least, I think. It will only get worse and worse until it starts to hurt, and you’ll call on me to help you, to stop the pain. It might not be in the next few hours, or even tonight, but by tomorrow morning, I’ll have you, and you’ll have my mark on your neck. Then I can fuck you whenever I want.”

“Why me?” Dean ground out through his clenched teeth.

“You are a lovely omega, Dean, and so much fire. I’ll just love breaking you. I tried before with Aaron, but he bored me before the game was up.”

“No!”

“Oh yes, you think you’re the first to be in this position? But I have confidence in you Dean. That fighting spirit, like a bronco.” He shivered, a light smile on his face. 

“Aaron would have said—.”

“Perhaps, if he remembered. But he was on a heavy cocktail of drugs at the time, thinks it was all a dream.” Alistair walked over to the table next to Dean’s bed and grabbed a syringe out of the drawer. “That reminds me, here you go.” He slid the needle into Dean’s arm and soon Dean was feeling fuzzy around the edges, things shifting in and out of his vision. 

Dean closed his eyes and immediately saw the vibrant blue eyes of James Novak, could hear the rumbling voice in his mind, _“I’ve got you, my omega. I’ve got you.”_

  
**CHARLIE**  


The next day, Charlie pounded on Dean’s apartment door with no answer. She was about to call his cell again when a neighbor popped her head out. “Are you looking for Dean?” she asked.

Charlie smiled at the brunette, her voice shaking with nerves. An omega could at least text between flashes of heat and it had been radio silence for a day and a half. “Yes, he’s not answering the door or his phone. I’m worried.”

“He left yesterday with some guy. I didn’t like him, but he said it was an emergency and they had to go to the doctor.”

Charlie turned back towards the door; shoulders slumped. “Dean told you it was an emergency? Why didn’t he call me, then?”

The woman shook her head, “No, no. Dean was sick, like a bad heat but smelled a kind of funny, tinny maybe? It was the other man; he was the one that talked. I thought they must have been friends if Dean had let him in and they were going to the hospital or something.”

“Of course, thank you—”

“Cassie. Dean is a nice guy; I hope something isn’t wrong with him. Especially with the babies to take care of.”

“Me too, Cassie. Thanks.”

Charlie ran back to her car and opened her laptop. She thought about calling Bobby, but if Dean had gone somewhere, she did not want to work the man up when they had the babies. Thanking the powers that be that she had a hotspot on her phone. She hacked into the local traffic cameras to see if she could spot Dean as he left the building. There was a camera almost directly in front of the building. As she isolated it and rolled back the video, she found what she was looking for, a dark car with the rear windows tinted pulling up to the front of the building. Unfortunately, where the car parked was halfway obscured by a tree, but she could see the bottom half of people approaching it. She prayed that would be enough. After about five minutes of waiting, two sets of legs came into view—one walking straight, the other very wobbly as if being helped to walk, and that one was in pajama shorts. That had to be them. She tracked them through the cameras until the sedan rolled into a driveway of a gated residence, that of Alistair Sharpe.

She drove across town towards the house, trying to think of a plan. The police weren’t likely to believe he if she called 911 and said, “Hey, my friend was kidnapped by Alistair Sharpe and he needs help.” Technically, all her video surveillance was illegal and therefore could not be shown to the police to convince them. She was going to have to get creative. She spotted a big box store coming up and made a hard right into the parking lot. She flew down the aisles to the electronic section and bought a prepaid phone and a 30-minute card with cash. She got back into her car and plugged the phone into her computer to start charging it and set it up, then went back to driving. Ten minutes later she pulled up in front of the gated house. She hauled the laptop up to her lap and broke into the security system. There seemed to be a brick wall around most of the land, with cameras at critical points. One though was vulnerable, in a corner of the yard and there were leaves partially obscuring the shot. She drove the car around until she was parked under it, stowing the computer in the trunk and grabbed the burner phone. She climbed onto the hood of her car and used that to scale the fence next to the camera. She grabbed a small leafy branch that hung over the outside of the brick wall and broke it off. She used it to knock the camera away as if a branch had fallen off and did the damage naturally. At least that what she hoped for the next ten minutes or so.

She dropped and dashed across the yard towards an old door that she prayed was unlocked. It was, it turned out to be an unused mud room. She could hear noises, the sound of whimpering or crying. She peeked around the partially closed door, down the hallway. There was a bed and a person laying on it. The person with same pajama shorts as the person that left Dean’s apartment building.

“How’s that heat coming along, Dean?” Alistair Sharpe’s voice almost made her jump. She stilled herself and listened. “Need any relief yet? No? Tsk, tsk, you are a strong one. Mmmm, all that will be much better then when I break you. Aaron didn’t last nearly this long, I fucked him for hours and he still doesn’t know if it was real or not. I can see him sometimes trying to figure it out. If it was all a bad dream…You though, I can tell, you’ll still be fighting me even after you give in. I know that it’s supposed to be an alpha thing to bend you over and pound you into the mattress, but the first time a stick my cock in you, you’re going to look at me. You’re going to face me as I ram my knot in your hole and claim you. You won’t be able to escape in your head and pretend it’s that Jimmy Angel person you’ve been moaning about. Do you understand?”

She closed her eyes but couldn’t avoid hearing Dean’s response. A long whine, and then silence.

Sharpe’s voice became deeper. “I’ve been needing an omega of my own for my friends and our get togethers. I love fucking their omegas, knotting them deep in their heats then passing them around and watching them be rammed again and again by all our friends. I needed the perfect one of my own to bring and share. There are quite a few of us, and you’re very pretty Dean. I doubt you’ll get any sleep during your next heat, getting no relief from anyone’s knot but mine until you’re screaming for me again. Maybe have Cuthbert or Styne knot you in the mouth while I fuck your pretty little hole. I’ll watch the whole time I’m not fucking you raw over and over myself. Those heat tablets you’ve been taking? I’ll keep you taking them, keep you in heat as often as I can. When we are not filling you with our cocks, I’ll keep you plugged like the bitch you are, stretched and ready for me, full of my come.” Dean whimpered and she couldn’t hear what he said after that. She peeked around the doorway and saw Sharpe with a hand inside Dean’s pajama shorts. Dean bucked as if trying to move away, but his legs were tied as well. Sharpe removed his hand and licked his fingers. “Your slick tastes as good as you smell, Dean. You will be mine very soon, and once that bite is on your neck, you’ll submit to me whether you want to or not. I hope you still have this fire in you the first time I bring you to your coming out party. All of us fucking you into submission will be so, so good.”

She heard the snick of a door closing in the other room and dared to crouch down, silently as she could, to see if Sharpe was gone. She felt like a traitor to Dean as she slunk back to the mud room and closed the door behind her, softly as a mouse. She pulled out the disposable phone and dialed 911.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

Charlie didn’t have to fake the voice of someone scared out of their wits, the gulping for air, the trembling sound as she held back tears. She had to convince the dispatcher that she had been kidnapped as well. “You gotta help me, please.”

“Do you need an ambulance, police assistance?”

“He—he took us, I’m so scared. I’m in his house somewhere and I found a phone, but you have to hurry or he’s going to find me!”

“Who is this? Who’s going to find you? Are you hurt?”

“Alistair Sharpe! I think we’re in his house! Please, my friend is in heat and now I can’t find him. He took him back to a bedroom or—” She really did choke back a sob.

“Ma’am, I’ve dispatched police and ambulance. Just stay where you are and stay hidden. You don’t have to talk to me, but can you stay on the line?”

“Oh, god, he’s coming!” Charlie hung up the phone and waited. It seemed like an eternity before she heard the sirens of the emergency services. Then the pounding of the police at the door. The only sound following that was scuffling, and then a gunshot. 

She screamed as loud as she could to let the police know that they were there, praying that it was the police that had shot Sharpe. “Help! Help! We’re in here!”

Unfortunately, the first figure at the door was Alistair Sharpe himself with a large handgun. His white shirt speckled with blood; his hair mussed from the fight. “Well, well, if it isn’t our Miss Bradbury. I should have known. From that—” whatever he intended to say next was never known as blood bloomed from the chest at the sound of another gun fired. Sharpe dropped to the ground, fatally wounded.

A female police officer still held the gun in her hands after he dropped, but she holstered it after she saw Charlie huddled down beside Dean, tied to a bed in the room, alone. She spoke into the radio on her shoulder. “Dispatch, I need a priority one bus up here at the Sharpe place. One officer down, suspect down, one omega in heat, looks in bad shape.” She held out her hands, palms out to show that she wasn’t going to hurt them. “I’m Sheriff Mills. Are you the one that called this in?”

Charlie nodded, starting to stand. “Charlie.” She placed a hand on Dean’s wrist. “This is Dean. I don’t know what he did to him.”

“I have an ambulance coming for him. Are you hurt?”

Charlie shook her head.

“Do you mind if I check him?”

Charlie stepped back, hugging herself as she let the tears finally fall. The sheriff checked Dean’s pulse and that he was breathing. As she donned blue gloves, she stepped to his ankles. “I’m going to try and remove the leg restraints. He might kick out, so stand back honey.”

Charlie moved to a corner of the room and watched as the sheriff undid the old-style hospital leather cuffs from his legs. Making sure to take pictures before, during, and after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I was asked about this and I thought I'd clarify in case anyone else thought it was unclear. No, Alistair did not have the opportunity to rape Dean, although the intent was there, obviously. The only physical act was the kidnapping and groping (which is awful enough).


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**CASTIEL**  


_“Come back to me…”_

Castiel Novak blinked into wakefulness. The dream was different than the ones that he had of the nameless omega he had wanted to mate nearly two years before. Those dreams had been lusty reenactments of their one encounter, then fading into loss and recrimination once he had lost the man. This dream though, it was though Cas was protecting him from something awful, a black goo oozing in from the edges of the nightmare. They couldn’t see much, but the potent scents of his omega in pain, a bad heat, and the overwhelming smell of a violent alpha who was attempting to claim the omega unwillingly. Finally, the terror had receded, and the man had rested in his arms, serene and quiet. The omega had leaned back and kissed him gently, whispering to him, “Come back to me.”

Castiel lay in his empty bed, the hole in his life that he had thought had healed, ripped open again. Knowing that he would not be getting back to sleep at that point, he checked his phone, only four minutes until the alarm was supposed to go off. Today was the day that he had promised his brother to watch their baby, Claire, for the weekend so they could get some well-deserved rest. Claire, at six months old, was already a handful, scooting around on her butt and grabbing at whatever object caught her attention. He had been advised by Amelia that he needed to do more baby-proofing before they arrived at one. He groaned and wanted to roll back over to recapture the last part of the dream, but he had work to do. By the time that Amelia and Jimmy had arrived with the baby, there were child locks on the kitchen cabinets and half of his nick knacks had been moved to higher shelves. Amelia held the blue-eyed baby while his brother set up a pack and play in the living room. 

“I want to thank you again for this, Cassie. Jimmy and I, we haven’t gone out a lot since Claire was born. A night away is just what we need.” She handed the baby off to him and grinned as Jimmy came up behind her and snaked his arm around her waist.

“No problem, Ames.” Castiel snuggled Claire close as the baby tried to grab his chin. “Princess here needs to get to know her favorite uncle.”

Jimmy chuckled, “I think Hannah and Crowley might fight you for the title of favorite.”

Castiel bounced the baby on his hip. “We don’t care about old growly Crowley, do we princess?”

“Amelia is right, though, Cassie. We can’t thank you enough.”

“Any plans?” 

“Amelia’s parents left her that cabin up near Powderhorn, we’re going to head there after dinner. We should be back Monday afternoon at the latest. Cell service ain’t that great up there, but we’ll try and get into town at least a couple times to check in.”

“It’s fine, Jimmy. I have her schedule and you dropped off everything that she should need. I’ve babysat for you overnight before. I can always call Hannah if I need help, too” 

Amelia held her hands up, “I’m sure, Cassie. We just haven’t been away from the baby for this long.”

Castiel laughed and rubbed the baby’s nose with his. “Well, don’t let us hold you up. We’re going to be fine. Don’t worry, just have a good time.”

Amelia kissed her brother in law on the cheek and Jimmy clapped Castiel on the shoulder before they left the apartment, waving at their daughter. 

  


Monday afternoon and the rain continued like it had been most of the day. Claire had been put down for her afternoon nap and Castiel was catching up with emails on his laptop during the rare moment of peace. Jimmy had called that morning and said that they would be heading out early and to expect them by three, barring traffic. 

His cell phone ringing brought him out of his work mind. His sister’s name flashed on the screen. 

“Hello, Han. What’s going on?”

His sister’s normally bubbly voice seemed reserved. “Cassie, have you talked to Jimmy and Amelia? They were supposed to stop by with Claire for dinner once they were home and I can’t reach them on either of their cells.”

“I wouldn’t worry, Sis. You know that they might not have great coverage. Probably can’t get a signal.” Castiel leaned back in his chair and turned to face the window. He pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m sure it’s just all this rain causing traffic. You know how drivers get when it starts getting wet out there.”

“Cassie, they were supposed to be at my house nearly two hours ago. They should have been getting reliable phone service once they cleared the woods. I’m worried.”

“Hannah, it’s—” he checked the clock on the laptop and felt his heart flutter at the time, “715. Jesus, I didn’t realize how late it was. You can’t get through to them at all?” He sat upright in the chair and brought up the traffic map, red and yellow lines all over. “Looks like the roads are awful the whole area, I’m sure it’s just nasty traffic.”

He could hear the relief in his sister’s voice. “Okay, thanks. I just wanted someone who took me seriously. With Fergus in Japan this week, it’s just me and Rowena and she just doesn’t want to hear it. Would rather just lock herself up in her rooms and sell her magic spells and potions.”

“She’s a witch, Hannah, literally.”

“Yeah, well, she could help me out a little here. Cast a locator spell or at least give me something to calm me down.”

“Hannah, I—” the sound of Claire waking from her nap interrupted him. “Look, I gotta go, Claire’s awake. I’ll call you when they get here.”

“Okay, Cassie.”

He ended the call and picked up the little baby holding her tight as he bounced her in his arms. “Shh, baby girl. I got you.”

  


Castiel drifted off that night on the couch, Claire’s travel crib beside him, her tiny snores the only sound in the apartment. The knocking at the door awakened him. He checked to see that she still slept and walked towards the door. He checked the time on his phone as he reached it, 1028. Whoever it was knocked again, he swung the door open to find two police officers outside and his heart dropped into his stomach.

  


**DEAN**

Dean sat in the living room of Bobby and Ellen’s house, the twins playing with their toys on the carpet near his feet. He was glad that his godparents respected his wishes to not talk about ‘the incident’ as it was now being called. It was bad enough that his moose brother had taken an interest in Sheriff Mills when he got there on the second day that Dean was in the hospital. Sam, Jo, and Victor had all been full of righteous fury. Luckily, Dean had missed most of it since the hospital had sedated him until the heat was over. By the time he had awoken, almost a week later, he found out that Alistair was dead, Azazel was in jail, and a woman named Sarah Blake had been appointed the new principal of the school. 

Now he sat, watching his children play, he could only consider what would have happened if Charlie had not found him. He could feel his heartbeat speeding up as the anxiety kicked in, he flexed his hands in and out of fists as he tried to bring his breathing back under control. Jo peeked in from the kitchen. “You alright in there?” 

He flung his head into the back of the couch. “God, woman, yes. Go back to making out with Victor in the kitchen or whatever.”

Jo harrumphed and went back into the other room where he could hear them talking, just low enough so he couldn’t catch what they were saying. He flicked on the TV to drown them out. _“—Crowley. I am representing my mate, Hannah, and the rest of the Novak family—”_ Dean sat straight up in his seat and listened. _“—in their time of grief. My brother in law, James Novak, and his mate, Amelia, had long been two of the best people I knew. James, the strong, artistic alpha and his down to earth, but sassy beta bride. They only got to spend a short amount of time together as a mated couple, but they had been a match from the moment they had met at Novak Corporation. Though they did only have that short time, they were blessed with a beautiful child, a baby girl, whose health, happiness, and privacy are the things that this family will take great steps to protect. His brother Castiel was named by the two as the primary caregiver, assisted by my mate Hannah and myself, to raise the child should anything happen to them. As such, I am announcing for him that he will be stepping back on some of his duties as CEO to devote his time to caring for the child. As CFO, I will fill in some of those gaps and Balthazar Milton, COO, will handle the rest. James and Amelia will be greatly missed by everyone, and I’m sure that you will respect our wishes for privacy in this difficult time.”_

Dean turned the TV off when a large photo of the pair flashed on the screen. He didn’t notice the tear running down his cheek until Henry hit his knee with the toy truck in his hand. “Hey, little man, what you got there?”

Henry looked at his father with wide blue eyes that Dean had last seen in a drug filled dream while he had been Alistair’s captive. He was sure that those eyes and a long-remembered voice were what had kept him from relenting to Alistair. He would not admit it to anyone, but it had been the memory of that alpha that pulled him from the hell that was Alistair Sharpe’s bedroom. He pulled the blond boy onto his lap. 

“I hab a fruck!” Henry lifted the toy to Dean’s face so he could see it. 

Dean pressed the child into his chest and hugged him, placing a kiss on top of the curls. “Such a smart boy, Henry. I love you.”

  


Sam drove his brother to work on Monday, Dean’s first day back since the attack. When they pulled up in front of the school, Dean hesitated to get out. Sam reached over and grabbed his arm. “Hey, my flight doesn’t leave until tonight. You need anything, you just call me.”

Dean looked down for a minute and then back at his brother, “Thanks…but uh…I’ll be okay. Charlie’s there, Sharpe and that janitor are gone. If nothing else, it’s only for a few more months until the term ends and then we can talk again about me moving out to California, okay?”

Sam pinched his lips together and nodded. Dean stepped out and slung the satchel over his shoulder, before heading inside. He could hear the impala leave as he entered the building. It wasn’t until he was inside the office that he saw Aaron’s desk and his hands started to shake. What had Alistair said? That he had done much of the same to Aaron but had kept him so drugged that the man never knew if it was real or not. He started breathing raggedly and sat in his chair across from Aaron’s desk. What if Aaron still didn’t know? God, should he tell him? The bearded omega walked around the corner with a cup of coffee and stiffened at the sight of Dean.

“I didn’t realize you would be back today.” Aaron’s words stumbled out of his mouth as he set the cup on the desk rather than spilling it and took a step forward—hesitant.

Dean stood and tried to think of something to say, his mouth just opening and closing like a fish. His eyes closed as he took a steadying breath, and before he opened them his arms were full of sobbing omega. “Thank you, Dean. I thought I was going crazy. The few people I told, said it was impossible, that it had to be a fever induced hallucination from a bad heat. I started wearing blockers at work even though I knew they would gunk up my ability to scent properly but I wouldn’t feel the need to hurl involuntarily at his smell. I knew it though, I knew he did something.”

Dean hugged him back, then let him step back, each still holding on to each other’s arms. “Yeah, well. The bastard got what he deserved, can’t hurt anyone else. Charlie is the one that you have to really thank though. If she hadn’t figured out where I was, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Aaron looked at Dean in horror, “Did he really want to do all that just to mate someone? With his money and connections, he could have found a trophy omega anytime he wanted.”

Dean sighed and sat back at the desk. “I don’t know man, kept talking about wanting to break me, my spirit. Like I was a wild horse, or something. Dude was crazy.”

“Well, good riddance to bad rubbish as my grandfather always used to say.” 

“Amen.” 

Dean had tackled less than a third of his emails when a lovely beta woman walked up to his desk. “Dean Winchester?”

He looked up at her, “Well, you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.” He grinned at the woman. 

“Sarah Blake, I’m the interim principal until they find an official replacement.” She held out her hand for him to shake.

Dean cleared his throat and took her hand, dialing the grin back to a more workplace appropriate, cheerful smile. “Glad to meet you, Miss Blake.”

She smiled back, “Good to meet you, why don’t you come into my office and we can talk.”

He followed her, the first thing he noticed was that the heavy oak doors that had been there for Alistair’s office, were now replaced with French doors that were almost entirely window. “Nice doors.”

Miss Blake sat behind her desk. “Yes, we as leaders must be above reproach, and I believe that means that we take precautions to protect everyone from even the appearance of impropriety. Windowed doors on offices means that, even though we have privacy and can’t be overheard, both of us are protected from the other doing something that would be inappropriate, well physically at least.”

Dean gave a small nod. “Not a bad idea, Miss Blake.” 

She smiled and Dean felt relieved that it did not feel like a predatory smile, like the ones from Sharpe. “Please, I insist all the teachers call me Sarah.”

“All right, Sarah.”

She took a deep breath and placed her hands flat on the desk in front of her. “Dean, I know that it has been very traumatic for you here. I’m not just talking about the assault either. I’ve spoken to several of the other teachers and found that the behavior of Alistair Sharp was well beyond what someone, anyone, should have to tolerate in the workplace. You can have my word that the cameras have all been removed, your friend Charlie told me about them and helped with the removal, so you can ask her if you would like to confirm this.” She hesitated for a beat, “It seems there were other teachers that were—less than sympathetic. The school board has placed me here to weed that sort of thinking out. Many have been put on administrative watch, and any sort of trouble with them will find them out of a job. One of those people is Mrs. Carrigan, who I understand is your proctor this term for the sixth-grade class, correct?”

Dean nodded, “Um, yes. She is.”

“We’ve had complaints of favoritism between the genders and subgenders. I will need you to notify me if that behavior continues. It has been made clear to her and the others that this will no longer be tolerated. Nobody ever believes it though until the first one or two get fired.” She sat back in the chair and looked at him. “Any questions for me?”

The smile on Dean’s face grew back into a grin, “No, ma’am. I think we’ll get along just fine.”

The remainder of the semester flew by. Dean wondered how he managed to get through the previous months with all the stress, since once Miss Blake took over it was like a whole different school. She was right about one thing, it didn’t take too long for the first firing. He was surprised that it wasn’t Mrs. Carrigan (she was the second), but the PE teacher, Gordon Walker. Another person Dean was not sad to see the back of. 

By the time it was winter break and Mrs. Blake was signing off on his student teaching, it occurred to him that he might actually miss the place. Not enough to stay, plus Sam had hooked him up with an interview at a very nice private school in Palo Alto near Stanford as a kindergarten teacher. It didn’t hurt that Charlie had quit the Newton Elementary as well and was heading west. She claimed that the job wasn’t what they had promised her it would be, but every time Dean had mentioned Palo Alto, she would get a little sad or misty eyed. It wasn’t until he cornered her one day that she told him that she was from Mountain View, just south of there. 

  


Cain Worth, the principal of Knight’s Academy in Palo Alto, was a hard man for Dean to figure out. An alpha to be sure, his dominance was off the charts, but he seemed to convey an inner calm. Shoulder length salt and pepper hair and blue eyes that didn’t miss anything made for a striking face as well. “Mr. Winchester, it says here that you graduated magna cum laude from Kansas University.”

Dean nodded, “Correct, sir.”

“Can you explain the gap between graduation and your student teaching?” The sharp eyes of the man bored into him.

Dean ducked his head momentarily, he hoped that Sam was right about California being more progressive about unmated omegas with children. He decided to meet he man’s gaze, looking him straight in the eye. His voice barely shaking, “I was pregnant, twins actually. I was due in October, so it only made sense at the time to take a semester off to both have the children and recuperate before going back to work.”

“And the sire?”

Dean took a deep breath, remembering the man. “Died in a car accident. He didn’t know.”

He watched as Mr. Worth glanced at a photo on his desk and back at him. “My Collette passed away six years ago last month. Doesn’t get any easier, does it?”

Dean lowered his head, not proud of the half-truth, “No sir. It does not.”

Mr. Worth smiled, “Well, you seem to have a lot of family around you, that helps. Your brother, Sam, he and my nephew are friends. When we heard about the circumstances at your previous employer, I assured him we would look into your resume. You can be sure though, even without Sam’s constant praising of you, this resume would have gotten you an interview, at least.”

“Sammy is a great kid. He’s going to be a fantastic lawyer someday.”

Mr. Worth stood, “Well, I think you have my vote at least. As I told you on the phone, however, the governing board of the school votes after we make selections of a few candidates. From here it is out of my hands, but I will put up a fight for you.”

Dean shook the man’s hand. “Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you. How soon until you have a decision?”

“We have to have our candidates to them by Thursday, along with any notes that would aid in the decision. The board meets on Monday. I shall call you either way.”

  


Dean was double checking his resume one more time as he scrolled the job boards for teacher positions, not wanting to pin his hopes on one prospect, when the phone rang Monday. Number unknown, “Hello, Winchester speaking.”

“Dean Winchester, this is Cain from Knight’s Academy.”

“Mr. Worth, good to hear from you.”

“I’ll get right to it, my boy, it was a close one. It was between you and a beta who grew up in Sunnyvale just to the south of here.”

Dean slumped into his desk chair, his hand over one side of his face. “I understand, Mr. Worth. The board went with the local kid, not the poor role model with baggage from the last job.”

He heard a scoff on the line. “Dean, I hope by poor role model you mean, single parent who gave birth to two babies with no mate and still managed to graduate with honors, then only to survive a horrific attack and help take down an entire sex trafficking ring in the process. You know, they are still finding people to prosecute and locating omegas that had been missing for years?”

“I didn’t do anything, that was all Charlie and Sheriff Mills.”

“Learn to take a compliment when it’s given. Your testimony to the grand jury caused a lot of indictments. People are safer because of what you did. Many survivors would not feel comfortable speaking out.”

“Thank you, sir.” Dean said quietly.

“There you go! Anyways, they didn’t go with that beta whose only great attribute is their daddy is one of our patrons. You, my boy, you will start at the beginning of the fall term as the new kindergarten teacher for Knight’s Academy. The other teacher is Gabriel Milton. I’m sure the two of you will get along famously. I will email the details of the contract for you to look over, we will need it signed soon. Then after we are finished with that, you’ll receive several emails over the next few months with information. Make sure to check them all, of course, sometimes the school likes to bury good information in a bunch of drivel.”

Dean couldn’t help but laugh, “Of course, Mr. Worth. I look forward to working with you.”

“Call me Cain.”


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Four years later**

**  
**

**CASTIEL**

  


Castiel wandered around the living room of their new house, unpacking random objects from boxes while trying to hold the phone to his ear. “The house is great, Gabe. I think this will be good for Claire.”

His cousin chuckled across the connection, “Plus she gets to see me every day while she’s at school. That’s a win-win in my book.”

Castiel sighed and took a deep breath as he sat down on the sofa. “That really is a huge burden off my mind. When Hannah and Crowley first proposed the move, I didn’t know what to do, but I knew they weren’t happy in Chicago. They were only staying to help me with Claire. Her starting school this year was going to be daunting for all of us. Our schedules alone were a nightmare.”

“Cassie, there’s nothing wrong with hiring help.”

"I know.” Castiel closed his eyes and nodded. “I know, a part time nanny was discussed many times between us. Until they brought up wanting to move to California, I didn’t want to face it though.”

“I still can’t believe that Balthazar talked you into moving with them.”

“It’s a sound business decision. I have fully stepped down as CEO now, so making me the VP for the western region cuts down the hours I’m away from home even more as well because there’s less travel. I’m still available for Balt to bounce ideas off, and a majority stockholder, as well as a member of the board. I still have partial control if he pisses me off.”

“Which he still does on a regular basis, I’m sure.”

“God yes. I mean he’s the best business partner I could ask for, but sometimes he infuriates the crap out of me.”

“I still can’t believe he just invited you in when you interrupted his ménage a…what was it?”

“Twelve. Don’t remind me.”

“I wish I could have seen your face!” 

Castiel could hear the laughter of his cousin over the phone. “Tell me about Claire’s teacher.”

“Well, he’s an omega, and the second-best kindergarten teacher there, behind me of course. As you know, I couldn’t teach her because we’re related. I had his twins in my class last year for the same reason.”

“Mated then.”

“No, actually. I think the alpha died before the children were born. At least that’s what I remember Cain saying when the man was hired. They are truly two of the cutest kids I have ever seen, but that only stands to reason when their daddy looks like a male model.”

“I don’t really care what he looks like, as long as he does a good job with Claire.”

“He will, Dean’s excellent with the kiddos. He’s a little skittish around some of the parents, though, alphas in particular. I think something happened to him before he came here, that’s the rumor anyway. Maybe it would be best if Hannah did the morning drop offs.”

“That was probably going to happen anyways, with her working from home, she just has more flexibility there. Teacher meetings might be an issue though, since he’ll have to meet me then.”

He could hear Gabriel fiddling with one of his ever-present candy wrappers, “We cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  


The first day of school was Dean’s favorite. Meeting the children and usually the parents, sometimes an aunt, uncle, or some other caregiver. He’d had most of the children’s files for a couple of days with their names and birthdays, emergency contacts, that sort of thing, but this was the day they became real. First in was a tiny little slip of a girl, Rebecca, with red hair. Her mother told him that she likes to be called Beks. Then two little boys, Ryan and Christophe, and their respective parents. He always chuckled when the Disney and pop culture references crept into the kid’s names. The previous year he’d actually had a kid named Anakin. 

A dark-haired woman with soft blue eyes entered with a blonde girl. He stuck his hand out to greet them. “Dean Winchester, I’ll be teaching kindergarten this year.”

The woman smiled and her eyes sparkled. “I’m Hannah Crowley.”

Dean knelt down to the girl, like he did with all the kids, “And who are you?”

“Claire.” The girl whispered her name and slipped her arm around Hannah’s legs, hugging tight. 

“Hi, Claire. I think you are going to have fun here. You see the other kids over there?” He watched as she nodded without speaking. “You want to go over and play with them for a minute?”

The little girl looked up at Hannah, who nodded, and shot off to play with the other kids. Dean stood up to speak to the woman. “Don’t worry, mom, that’s perfectly normal on the first few days. Give it a few and she’ll be making a ton of friends and will hardly notice you leaving each day.”

Hannah nodded. “Actually, I’m Claire’s aunt. Her parents died when she was very little.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be. My brother, Castiel, actually has custody, I help since my work has more leeway about these sorts of things, so I’ll be the one dropping her off most mornings. Gabriel, the other teacher here, is our cousin so he’ll take her home later. It’s the ideal arrangement for us.”

“Oh, this is Gabe’s niece? Uh, second cousin? Whatever, he’s been talking about her all last week, said she’d be in my class.”

She smiled and nodded, “Yes, I’m sure that had she been allowed in his class, she would have been extremely spoiled. I’m glad they had an alternative.”

“Well, it’s only fair. He had to teach my little monsters last year.”

“You have children, Mr. Winchester?” She cocked her head to listen to him. Dean couldn’t help but think of his son, Henry at the movement.

Dean grinned, he always did when he talked about the kids. “Twins, Henry and Emma. They’re going to drive me into an early grave one day, but I love them.”

“I think that’s how all of us feel.” She checked the time. “I’m sure you have other parents and students you need to meet, so I’ll just say goodbye to Claire and be off.”

He waved goodbye, just in time for another parent and child coming in the door. His attention fully on them. 

  


Dean sat at the desk, Claire sitting on the floor with one of the toys, happily playing quietly, when Gabriel burst in. “Claire Bear! You ready to go home!”

“Uncle Gabe! I did it!” She ran over to the shorter man and hopped into his arms.

“You did, princess! Did you like being with Mister Dean today?” 

“Uh-huh!” the little girl nodded her head vigorously. 

“Hey Gabe! How was your class?” Dean stood and walked around his desk, leaning against it. 

“It would have been better if Princess Claire was there, but then all the other kids would have been mad because she’d be the only one getting my attention.” He tickled Claire and she squealed.

Dean chuckled, “I know the feeling.”

It was then that his own children burst in, “Daddy, daddy” Emma called to him as he scooped her up. Their first-grade teacher, Jessica Moore, trailing behind them.

“Hey Pumpkins. Jess, hi.” He ruffled the hair on Henry’s head as the boy stared at the other little girl. Dean felt the boy tug on his pants and looked down at him.

“Who’s that?” Henry took his fist off Dean’s pants and pointed to Claire.

“That’s Claire. She’s in my class this year. You want to say hi?” Henry shook his head and buried it in Dean’s pants leg. 

Gabe laughed, “I can see that he’s not gotten over the shyness.”

Jessica waved and stuck her thumb out the door to let them know she was taking off. Dean waved at her and put Emma down. “No, not really. Emma’s friendly enough for the both of them though.”

Emma ran to Claire, who was back to playing with her toy on the floor. Gabe walked over to sit on the desk next to Dean. “Claire give you any trouble?”

“Nah. A little hiccup after her aunt left. But nothing that wasn’t the normal. By the snack time, she was right there in the mix with all of them.”

“That’s good. My cousin, Cassie—Castiel—he took it pretty hard when Claire’s dad and mom died. He’s devoted himself to raising his brother’s child. They were identical twins you know. I was close with them, but even I can’t imagine losing a twin.”

Dean thought about Sam and watched his own twins as they played quietly with Claire. “I can’t either.”

“I have to give Cassie credit, though. I wasn’t sure at first that he was up to it.”

“Why was that?”

“Cassie is a very high-powered business type alpha, but sometimes not the best socially. He’s…no nonsense I guess would be the way to describe him. He threw himself into the business when he was younger, so of course that meant he was single, no distractions, whatever. I mean he dated, but a couple of years before that, some omega broke his heart and he just sort of closed that part of himself off. Then the accident happened, suddenly Cassie was supposed to be a father to a six-month-old baby. The next thing I know, he’s stepping back and giving his business partner more of the reigns, he’s traveling a lot less. Hell, Balt even got him to move to California when Hannah and her mate were moving here. I thought they would have stayed in Chicago forever.”

“Family, Gabe. You were here, and if his sister and her mate were going to be here, it only makes sense. They probably would have been adrift if they had stayed.” Dean shrugged his shoulders. His friend had talked a little about Castiel when his cousin had first moved here, and Dean was intrigued. 

Gabe knocked him on the shoulder. “Well, we’re going to get going. See you tomorrow.”

“See ya.”


	16. Chapter Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one you've been waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the love and the feedback, I probably won't respond to your individual comments, but I read every one and sometimes clarify something (there's now a note at the end of Chapter thirteen--the bad one). I kind of threw this together really quick now that my head's back on straight-ish. I'm posting it as quickly as a can with having a job and life being slightly hectic. I promise it is finished though and I'll have the entire thing up as soon as possible.

**DEAN**

Dean looked around his classroom, making sure everything was in place for back to school night. Art projects on the walls, their cubbies all had the kid’s names on them, etc. At least as a kindergarten teacher, he had it easier than most of the other teachers at Knight’s Academy. Plus, he had the advantage of already meeting most of the parents. The only one he had still not met was Claire’s legal guardian, her uncle Castiel. The few things that Gabe or Claire’s aunt Hannah had mentioned made him interested to meet the alpha. Not that it would matter, Dean had sworn off alphas ever since the nightmare with Alistair Sharpe. He knew he needed to control his scent because every time he thought back to the events of that day—what he could even remember—Dean wanted to vomit. He stood and tidied some papers and sprayed the air with scent neutralizer to clear the acrid scent of rotten flowers from the room before anyone arrived. At least the twins were with Sam and Jodi for the night. 

  
**CASTIEL**   


Castiel pulled into the school’s parking lot, Claire buckled into the back seat. The soundtrack to Frozen playing on her headphones. He was eternally grateful that Gabriel had gifted her the kids tablet so she could listen to her favorite songs with a pair of headphones rather than through the car’s speakers. The lot was already beginning to fill up, even though they were early, but he managed to find a spot next to a beautiful, black classic car. He made sure to give it plenty of room, whoever drove a car that looked like that obviously made sure to take extraordinary care of it. 

Claire jumped from the car and into his arms as he swung her around and set her on the ground. He gave one last look at the gorgeous vehicle, there really was something about it. He held her tiny hand as they walked into the school. The mix of people’s scents washed over him, it took a moment to notice the faint aroma of oranges. As he took it in, he felt the immediate effect of it calming him. He breathed in deeply as he let himself be guided by Claire towards her classroom, the soothing scent that dug at his memories got only stronger and as he approached the door with paper angels covering it, he picked up the notes of gardenias. Castiel could barely breathe as he opened the door. A man, an omega was inside, talking to his cousin of all things. Tall, bowed legs, dark blond hair…This can’t be. He could tell the instant that his own scent reached the omega. The man stiffened, and the scent of oranges started to smell burnt, anxious, he turned around slowly to face Castiel looking as if he’d seen a ghost. Castiel took a hesitant step forward.

“James! You’re dead!” Dean breathed, just loud enough for Castiel to hear it.

Castiel stumbled slightly, before the grin spread over his face. “Not James. And most certainly not dead, Mr. Winchester.”

The sound of laughter from behind Dean made the man realize that they were not alone. “Hey, Claire bear, why don’t you come with your uncle Gabe and see my room. I think Papa Cas and Mr. Dean need to talk for a minute.” Gabe grabbed the little girl’s hand and took her away. 

As soon as the door shut, Castiel turned to Dean. “Is that what happened, omega? You thought I was James?”

“I saw you—er, James, I guess. I saw him announcing his engagement.”

Castiel took another step closer to Dean. “You were there that night? God, Dean, I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you call me? Even just to cuss me out? We would have figured it out years ago.”

Dean ducked his head, not looking Castiel in the eye. “Thought about it.”

“You blocked me, didn’t you? I tried to contact you so many times.” He took a last step, closing the distance between them, placing a hand on his cheek. “My omega.” 

A tear fell down Dean’s face. “I thought you were dead.” 

“No, no, Dean. I would never leave you.”

“You don’t even know me, dude.”

“I’d like to, though. If you’d let me.”

Before Dean could answer, the door opened, and a boy named Aiden and his parents entered. The two men stepped apart and Castiel moved to look around the room that Claire spent so much time in. She loved being in Mr. Dean’s class, as she called him. 

He found her painting right away; the stick figure family was quite a bit different than most. Their avocado pits propped up on toothpicks in cups made him smile. He was sure that was something that he would not have seen in Chicago. He kept unconsciously sneaking looks back to the omega. Castiel was in disbelief, he never thought that he would see the man again, and there he was. If he had thought Dean handsome all those years ago, he was even more handsome now. There was a picture collage of Claire’s class on the wall. From Claire’s outfit, it looked like the first day of school. At the bottom was a picture of the man himself, with a child on each side smiling wide. Gabriel had mentioned that Dean had kids, twins. This picture must be them.

“Hey Cas!” Dean’s voice called him away before he could look more at the picture. 

“What did you call me?” He tilted his head in confusion. 

“Well, Castiel’s a bit of a mouthful, don’t you think? Don’t you like it?”

Cas smiled. “I like it a lot better than Cassie, which is what the rest of the family calls me.”

There were still several children and parents milling around the room. “Look, Cas. I gotta stay for this. But I do want to talk to you.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “We need to talk, I think.”

Cas nodded and patted his coat for his wallet, when he found it, he fished out a business card that had all his contact info on it. “Here. My cells on there. Let me know when you’re done, and we can get a late coffee or something. Or do you have to get home?”

Dean took the card and strummed it against his fingers. “No, um, I’ve got things covered. I’ll text you, Cas.”

Dean still looked nervous as Cas left the room floating on air heading towards Gabriel’s room to rescue Claire. He toughened himself for the assault of questions he would get from his cousin. 

  


Gabe turned around when the door opened and broke out in a grin. “Cassie, Cassie, Cassie…why didn’t you tell me you knew Dean-o?” Gabriel waggled his eyebrows at him.

Cas sighed and walked towards Claire, who was eating a cookie. “Hey, peanut. Are you having a good time over here?” 

Claire nodded and continued with her cookie. “I’ll bet.” He mumbled as he looked at his cousin. 

“Gabriel.” His cousin raised an eyebrow at the use of his full name. “Gabe, please be serious for a minute.”

“Why should I, takes all the fun out of everything.”

“Gabe please. Look, I know you’re dying to ask questions, but I don’t have any good answers for you yet. But he promised to text me when he was done with this and we would get coffee or something. If you take Claire home and watch her for the night, I promise to give you a full debriefing in the morning.”

“One question before I agree.”

“Fine, what?”

“Is that him? The guy that left you hanging before?”

“It wasn’t what we—what I—thought it was, but yes.”

“I gathered that when he called you James. Look, I’ll watch the little munchkin, but you watch yourself. Hannah and I had to pick up the pieces last time.”

“And I will be eternally grateful to you.”

  
**DEAN**   


Dean stalled as long as he could after the last student left, tidying up. He called Sam and checked on the kids, but they were engrossed in watching Tangled for the eighty-seventh time. Finally, he couldn’t delay it any further and took the card out of his wallet, carefully punching in the numbers. 

**To Cas:** _Hey Cas. If you’re still interested in that talk. Heavenly Delights on 4th and Mayberry makes a mean cup of joe._

**To Dean:** _I’ll be waiting for you._

Dean exhaled as he slipped his phone in his pocket and grabbed his jacket to leave. he couldn’t believe that in a matter of seconds his entire world had flipped upside down. As he got to the Impala, he realized that he would have to tell Cas about the twins. God, what if he hated him after that. His hands shook as he unlocked the door and he stepped in, his eyes immediately tracking to the two car seats in the back. Dean couldn’t disappear on him again though, not when he knew that he was wrong in the first place. He was so angry at himself that he slammed a hand down on the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch!” If he had only called to yell at the man, like he had thought to at first…god, so many things could have been different. _I’m such a fucking idiot!_ He slammed the Impala into gear and screamed out of the lot. It was only a couple minutes to Heavenly Delights, thank god because teachers ran on coffee, but Cas still beat him there. He had probably waited in the parking lot of the school until he got the text telling him where to meet. He wasn’t really a praying man, but a few pleases may have slipped out as he walked to the door. 

Cas’s entire being lit up when he saw Dean walk in, and that made Dean feel even more like shit. 

“Hello, Dean.”

“Heya, Cas. Why don’t you find us a table, I’m going to order myself a coffee.” Dean rubbed his hands together as Cas immediately headed to the booth on the end for extra privacy. 

By the time Dean made his way over with his own cup of coffee, his anxiety was climbing again. He sat in front of the man that he had only seen in his dreams and reflected in his children’s faces for the last several years. 

Cas slid a hand across the table as if he was going to take one of Dean’s hands in his, but at the last minute, curled his fingers inwards and moved it back a couple inches. Dean opened his mouth to speak, but Cas cut him off, “Before you say anything, Dean, I just want you to know that you don’t owe me anything. We don’t ever have to see each other again if you don’t want to, it’s enough for me to know that what happened all those years ago wasn’t…well…a rejection of me, actually. Just a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

Dean managed a half smile, looking down for a minute before returning his gaze. “Thanks, I guess. Doesn’t make me feel any less than an idiot, though.”

“No, no, no, Dean. Why would you think that? Tell me exactly what happened, I know you said you were there, how come I didn’t see you?”

“That would have made it simpler wouldn’t it? Ellen hired me to help with the toast, serve the champagne, you know? I wasn’t real comfortable, so I kind of kept to the back. After the announcement, I was in such shock, I ran out the back. Didn’t even stay to get paid, my friend Jo had to bring me the money the next day.”

“I’m so sorry, Dean. I can’t imagine what was going through your mind.”

“I was furious, ashamed, hurt, just everything. I was halfway through a text tearing you a new one when Jo came looking for me, I didn’t want her, anyone, to see me like that so I just deleted everything and blocked you.”

“Well, that explains why all my messages got sent back with an error.”

Dean nodded and sat back in the booth, his hands in his lap. “Look, Cas. There’s something I have to tell you and it’s really important.”

“Is it that you are an unmated omega with children now? I know, Gabe told me about you when Claire was assigned to your class. Don’t worry. I know what it’s like to be a single parent. Like I said, I’m not pressuring you or expecting anything of you. If you want to be friends, that’s okay. If you’d like to try something more, I’d like that too.”

Dean rolled his eyes and dragged out his wallet to find a picture of the twins, placing it in front of Castiel. He pointed to each of them, speaking in the same gentle tone he always had when he spoke about his kids. “This is Henry Tyler, and this is Emma Grace. They were six years old in September, a little early because they were twins, but they’re fine. If I had to, I’d say that Henry looks more like his father than Emma does, but she has his hair.”

“Nonsense, your hair is blond.” 

Dean took his finger and tilted Cas’s face to look at him. “Their alpha father, Cas.”

He could see the wheels turning in Cas’s head and then they all fell into place like the tumblers in a lock. “You were pregnant? Why? Why didn’t you contact me then? I would have been there in a heartbeat, you have to know that!”

“I thought you were _James_. And all I could imagine was that if you could cheat on your mate—fiancée, whatever—then you wouldn’t care what happened to me. Or worse, that you and your family would make me out to be some money hungry omega who gets knocked up to land a rich alpha. Or that they would fight for custody. I was scared, my family isn’t well off, I mean we get by alright, but we’re nothing like you or Alistair Sharpe—”

Cas cut him off, “Alistair Sharpe? Who the hell is Alistair Sharpe?”

Dean rubbed his hand over his forehead. “God, this is something I would rather never talk about again. Look, this is probably easier.” Dean pulled his phone out and googled Sharpe’s name. The first news story that came up was the one of Sharpe being shot by the sheriff when he was kidnapped. He slid his phone across the table to Cas. “It doesn’t mention me by name, that would be ‘the omega victim’. You can look up more articles yourself to back that up, there are plenty that splash my name all over, especially after the family had to pay out a settlement. I guess ‘greedy omega whore’ makes better copy than ‘victim receiving damages’.”

  
**CASTIEL**   


Castiel’s head was spinning as he read the article. He did remember hearing about it when it happened, although he never saw Dean’s face, he was sure of that. He remembers being disgusted at the news outlets turning the omega in question into a money-grubbing asshole rather than someone who honestly was looking to make the estate pay for turning a blind eye for so long. If it hadn’t been for other victims coming forward and joining the suit, Dean may not have won. He had been too absorbed with funeral arrangements and taking full time care of an infant to really follow the story, however.

He was starting to sweat and feel nauseous at the onslaught of news he had been given in such a short amount of time. He found his omega, yes, and he had told the man that he would respect Dean’s wishes to merely be friends if that’s what Dean wanted—and he would. But he could not deny they fact that even after all this time, his inner alpha was drawn to the omega. Right now, he wanted to steal him away and hide him from more hurt. On top of everything, to find out that he had left Dean pregnant. He was devastated that Dean had not reached out to him. He was a logical, pragmatic alpha and that side of him understood the reasons that Dean had laid out, but his heart hurt at the thought that his omega had gone through all of that without him, with twins even. 

Suddenly Dean was beside him, placing a glass of water in his hand, telling him to drink. The scent of oranges and gardenias brought his heartrate down and the water helped him clear his head. “Sorry about that, Cas. I really didn’t want to dump all that info on you at once.”

“I’ll be fine, Dean.”

“Do you hate me, Cas?” Dean’s voice small as he asked.

Cas looked up and turned Dean’s face toward him, noticing that Dean’s eyes were watery, as if holding back tears. “Never.”

Dean nodded. “Good. That’s good.” He looked up and breathed in deep. “I gave you a lot of information to digest. What do you say you go home and let it all sink in. We can talk again tomorrow? That sound good?”

Cas leaned his head on Dean’s shoulder and took a lungful of the omega’s heavenly scent in. “Yes, I think so.” He reached forward and touched the picture. “Can I keep this?”

“Sure Cas.” Dean stood and Cas scooted out of the booth to follow him outside. 

“That’s your car?” Cas pointed to the Impala.

“Yep, that’s my other baby. ’67 Chevy Impala, rebuilt it myself from the ground up a few years ago.

“I noticed earlier at the school, she’s beautiful.”

Dean’s smile soothed more of Cas’s butterflies, but set different ones free. “Of course, she is.” His voice sobered, “I mean it, Cas. We’ll talk tomorrow. I’m not going anywhere this time.”

Cas gave a small smile back. “Thank you.” He held up the picture, “And thank you for giving me this.”

“Of course, g’night.”

“Night, Dean.”


	17. Chapter Seventeen

**CASTIEL**  
Cas found it difficult to sleep. He ended up at 3am with a tumblerful of whiskey and a google search on Dean’s name. The horrible events of nearly five years previous laid bare before him, a kidnapping, forced heat, near rape and involuntary mating. Then having to testify publicly about things that happened, not to mention the civil settlement from the estate. How much of that would have been avoided if Cas had been there? God, the set of circumstances that kept them apart for so long had been ridiculous. A wave crashed over him and he bolted to the bathroom, the contents of his stomach spilling into the toilet until there was no more left. He made it back to the living room, the picture of the twins in one hand and the bottle of whiskey in the other and drank until he didn’t hurt anymore. 

He didn’t hear Gabriel enter the apartment in the morning with Claire, but he did hear his voice as they slipped past him. “Papa Cas is sleeping. Lets you go play in your room for a few minutes, and I’ll go wake him up, Okay?”

Cas tried to open his eyes, but the light shot daggers into them and he closed them again. He heard a thunk on the table next to him. “Drink this and take the aspirin, you’ll feel better.”

He managed to open his eyes and squinted at his cousin, who was scowling at him. “I knew this was going to be a mistake. Dammit, I liked Dean, now I’m going to have to kill him.”

Cas sat up still swaying slightly, a hand stretched out to Gabe. “Nooo. No hurting Dean, I’ve done enough.”

Gabe leaned back in his chair. “Done enough? Cassie, he’s the one that took off. If anyone got hurt, it was you.”

Cas scooted forward, knocking the coffee table, and waking his laptop back up. The image of Dean’s face from a headline for the civil settlement in bright contrast. He tried to close the laptop before Gabe could look at it. 

Gabe grabbed it out of his hands and opened it back up. _Dean Winchester, and seven co-defendants, awarded $15.8 million in settlement against the Sharpe estate after multiple indictments_ the picture of Dean jogging down the courthouse steps, a baby against his chest. “God, Cassie, no!” Gabe’s eyes wide in disbelief.

Cas nodded, “If we had talked, had our date, I’m sure none of,” he waved the hand with the picture in it at the computer, “that would have ever happened.” He looked at the photo in his hand again, his finger tracing along the faces.

“What do you have there, Cassie?” Gabe pointed with his chin. Cas handed the photo over to Gabe without a word. “This is a photo of Emma and Henry. Why do you have a picture of Dean’s kids, Cassie?”

Cas stood and wandered into the kitchen to fill the glass of water again before answering. When he returned to the sofa, he pointed to Henry, “He’s got my eyes, don’t you think?”

“Castiel Isiah Novak, you’re telling me that you’re the alpha father to Dean’s twins?”

“Timeline fits. Of course, I’ll have to do a paternity test to get put on the birth certificate.”

“Jesus fuck, Cassie. Why are you not pissed?”

“Do you remember Jimmy’s big announcement party for Amelia?” Cas waited for Gabe to nod. “He was there. Saw the whole thing, thought Jimmy was me, that I was a scumbag that cheated of their mate. Why would he have wanted anything to do with me?”

“Damn, you got any more of that whiskey left?” Cas handed the bottle over. Gabe grabbed the dirty glass his cousin had drank out of, poured himself a double, then knocked the whole thing back without a wince. “What are your plans now?”

Cas shrugged. “Call Dean. Hopes that he wants…something with me. I’d like to meet the children as soon as possible. I don’t know, Gabe.”

Gabe reached across and grabbed Cas’s hand, gave it a squeeze. “You got this. Don’t worry.”

  


**DEAN**

Dean walked into Sam and Jodi’s house. It was early, but he expected at least Emma would be up, watching cartoons with a bowl of whatever passed for cereal at his brother’s house. Instead she was in their guest room with her head lolling of the bed, half upside down, snoring away. Henry was snuggled around Ernie, the fuzzy elephant, tucked under the blankets still. Jodi appeared behind him in the doorway. “How was your coffee date?”

He followed her into the living room, “I told you guys last night, it wasn’t a date.”

“Okay, then what was it?” She started making coffee and gathering the ingredients for breakfast. “You guys staying?”

“And miss your pancakes, Jodes? Are you kidding me? 

She smiled as she dumped flour into a bowl. “Well, don’t think you’re getting off the hook that easy, mister. If it wasn’t for the kids needing to get up, we’d be having a discussion right now.”

“That’s my cue.” He rapped on the counter with his knuckles, winking before he turned to head back to the bedroom. He swung his head back around to look at Jodi again. “Hey, if I ask a couple friends to your BBQ next Saturday. That be okay?”

“Sure, we’ve got Donna and I think Brady and whatever lady friend he brings with him. Just let me know before Thursday so Sam and I can go shopping.”

“Will do.” He disappeared into the bedroom. By the time he came back in with two freshly woken five-year olds being herded into the kitchen to the table, Sam had come back from his run and was pouring a cup of coffee for Jodi and himself. “Sammy. I still can’t believe that you do that nonsense every day.”

“Hey running is good for you.” Sam snapped back at his brother before taking a sip of his drink. 

“But at what cost?” Dean took a plate of pancakes from Jodi and put it on the table, placing one on each of the kid’s plates. On Henry’s, he topped it with butter and a dollop of honey. Emma would always get fruity syrup and if she was lucky, a spray of whipped cream out of the can. Today was not the day for that however as he placed apple juice beside their plates and sat down to make his own. 

Sam put his cup down and stabbed a piece of fruit. “Are you going to tell us what was going on last night? When you called, you sounded…weird.”

“Pppssht? What are you talking about? Weird.” He wiped Henry’s face with the wet cloth he had brought with him to the table. 

Jodi glared at him. “Sort of like you’re being now, Dean.”

Dean shook his head and pointed at his brother, “Why did you have to go and marry a cop?”

“Don’t change the subject.” Jodi cut into her pancakes to take a bite. 

Dean could scent the annoyance from the both of them. He pushed back from the table slightly, his hands up. “Look, like I told you on the phone, I ran into someone last night that I hadn’t seen in a long time. We wanted to catch up is all.” 

Jodi stood and kissed Henry on top of his head, then did the same for Emma. “We’re just concerned for you, Dean. We want you to be happy.”

“I’m good, Jodes. Really. Go get ready for work. Your moose of a mate and I will clean up.”

“I’m counting on you to make sure Sam loads the dishwasher right, Dean.”

He barked out a laugh. “Jodi, you’ll never be happy with how anyone else loads it. Say hi to Donna for me.”

“Will do.”

After breakfast, he wiped the stickiness of the kid’s hands and faces and took them to the guest room to get them dressed. Sure enough, by the time he emerged, Sam had started loading the dishwasher haphazardly. He couldn’t stand watching anymore and had to force his way in. “Dude, how do you not know this by now?” he rearranged the top shelf and then placed the remaining dishes in as Sam handed them to him. 

“Want to know a secret?”

“I’m not listening to one of you and Jodi’s mating stories. The kids are right there.”

Sam grinned then went serious a second later. “God, no Dean. But, I, um, do this wrong on purpose.”

Dean’s eyes widened. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because every time I do it wrong, she comes in here and fixes it, and afterwards she gives me a kiss and calls me an idiot.”

“You like it when your mate calls you an idiot? What is wrong with you?”

“Didn’t you ever figure that out. When someone just shakes their head and says that you’re an idiot, that’s how you know they love you.”

Dean cocked his head to the side about to ask another question when Jodi returned in her full sheriff’s uniform, “It’s true. I don’t know what to tell you, but it is.”

“Huh,” Dean shook his head in disbelief. 

Jodi gave Sam a quick kiss. “You really are an idiot if you think I don’t know your little trick there.” She swatted his butt as she moved away. “Later Dean.”

Dean turned back to Sam, shaking his head once she left. “I still can’t believe you married the cop from my case.”

“What can I say? She’s hot.”  
It wasn’t until the kids were down for afternoon naps that Dean finally texted Cas. There was no way he was up for a phone conversation, but texts he could handle, he figured. He was still kicking himself after finding out about the horrible case of mistaken identity that he had going on. He had a feeling that he would think himself an idiot for a long time for that one. He carefully traced out the letters for a text, erasing it, writing something long winded, only to erase it once more. When he finally sent something, he had only typed “Hey”

The dots almost immediately under it made the knots in his stomach tighten. “Hello Dean”

He stood in the center of the living room staring at the two words on his phone. It was like the most awkward first date in history. “How you holding up?”

**To Dean:** _To be honest with you, I’m a bit hungover._

**To Cas:** _I’d be surprised if you hadn’t had a drink last night._

**To Cas:** _I’m sorry._

He flopped into the chair, letting the phone and his hand drop into his lap. He knew that it was unlikely that the still incredibly gorgeous alpha would want anything to do with him know that he’d screwed everything up so badly. He hoped that he could, at least, give his children the alpha father they have been missing. His phone pinged again. 

**To Dean:** _I told you last night that you didn’t have to apologize to me. You were alone and scared and thought that you had been lied to. Betrayed._

**To Cas:** _I still should have told you about the pregnancy. My brother threw a fit when I said I wasn’t telling you.”_

Dean thought back to the night he fought with Sam over not telling the alpha he would be a father. His brother had been right all along, of course, he was the smart one. They had not talked for weeks after that, and Dean had not felt so alone since he had discovered he was carrying. 

His phone dinged again. **To Dean:** _Would it be out of line to ask to meet them? You don’t have to tell them about me if it makes you uncomfortable._

Dean could feel his anxiety rising, but he had made the decision last night after he’d met with Cas. **To Cas:** _Was planning to ask you already, if you seemed up to it. 😊_


	18. Chapter Eighteen

**CASTIEL**

Cas sat on the bench at the park Dean had told him to meet at, while Claire played on the jungle gym in front of him. It was a few minutes before Dean was supposed to be there and he couldn’t help thinking back to the time all those years ago when he waited for Dean and he didn’t show up. He could feel himself getting more anxious by the second, his scent going from petrichor to thunderstorms. Claire looked over at him from the swings, her expression so much like James when he was worried. Suddenly, a mop of black hair ran past him, Dean’s voice calling out, “Emma Grace slow down! Jeez kid.” Cas looked behind him to see Dean holding the hand of a blond little boy. A smile crawled up the side of Dean’s mouth. “Hey Cas.”

He stood. “Hello Dean. Is this ou—your son?”

Dean looked down at Henry, who was staring at Cas. “Cas, this is Henry. Henry, my friend Castiel.”

Cas stared at a miniature at himself at the same age, except for the hair. He wouldn’t need to have a paternity test for his own peace of mind. The boy held up his small hand to wave at Cas. He held up his own and curled his fingers in a wave back. 

“Henry,” Dean interrupted them. “Why don’t you go play with your sister on the monkey bars.”

The boy scampered off, Cas following him with his eyes. He barely noticed as Dean sat down beside him. “He looks just like me.”

Dean chuckled. “Yeah, I though the same too.” 

“This is very surreal.” He squinted his eyes as he watched the children play together. 

“Look, Cas, if you don’t want to do this, you need to leave now. Before everyone finds out, before I talk to the kids.”

He looked at Dean, tilting his head in confusion. “No, I want to be here, in their lives. It’s just…Two days ago I didn’t know they existed. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it.”

Dean leaned back. “Yeah, well, two days ago I thought you were dead. Not you—you, James you. I’m sorry—” Cas tried to cut him off. “—I know you don’t want me to apologize about it, but listen, alright. I should have told you, it was wrong no matter what reason I had concocted in my head. It was only fear that made me do it—not do it.”

Cas sighed. “If I accept your apology, will you stop saying you’re sorry?”

“Look, I get it.” Dean looked over at Cas. “You forgive me, Cas, but I’m never going to forgive myself. It was a stupid move, and I’m going to pay for that for a long time.”

He turned sideways to face Dean. “Dammit Dean, stop. What’s done is done. You can’t change what you did any more than I can go back and stop James and Amelia from heading to that cabin four years ago.”

“But that wasn’t your fault. That was a car accident.”

“I don’t see the difference, Dean.”

“Don’t see the difference? God, Cas, everything is different. I made a decision. A bad one and it’s going to affect the rest of our lives.”

Cas picked at imaginary lint on his pants, not meeting Dean’s gaze. “Does it have to?”

“Cas, don’t.” Dean raised a hand to stop him. 

The two girls ran up, holding each other’s hand. “Daddy, daddy!” Emma squeaked. 

Both men turned to the children. “What is it, baby girl?” Dean asked his daughter. 

“Can Claire come to Uncle Sammy and Auntie Jodi’s party?”

“Papa Cas, can I?”

Cas glanced at Dean. “It’s not up to me Claire Bear.”

“Can she, daddy?” Emma widened her eyes and gave what could only be described as puppy dog eyes to Dean.

“You have to stop hanging out with Uncle Sammy if he’s just going to teach you his hangdog looks. But I already talked to them and they said I could bring a couple friends if I wanted, so if Claire and Papa Cas want to, then they are welcome.” 

Cas had noticed Dean’s lips had tugged as he had said the phrase ‘Papa Cas’ and he tried his best to stifle his own smile as he told Claire that they could go. The two girls ran back to the playground, hand in hand and Cas chuckled.  
  
**DEAN**  
Monday morning came too fast for Dean. He loved his job, but now it was all sorts of complicated. He had no idea what anyone in Castiel’s family knew, although he was sure that Gabe figured out they had a history. That scene at back-to-school night ensured that. The extent of the history, he had no idea, nor did he know if Hannah knew anything and she was supposed to drop Claire off this morning. He was going to sweat through his blockers by noon at this rate. He was tidying some papers up when the door was thrown open. “Dean-o! Let’s talk.”

Gabriel Milton may have been shorter than both Winchester brothers, and Cas now that he though about it, but he was a very powerful alpha. It was something that he kept concealed most of the time, especially given his profession as kindergarten teacher. Now, Dean could see it. He never realized how much the smaller man had smelled like Cas until he noted the pine scent today, although now it was being buried under a layer a fury that smelled of a forest fire. Dean goddamn whimpered at the sight.  
He bared his neck at the show of power. “I guess you know, then?”

“He was a wreck after you abandoned him, you know? Did he tell you that much? Hannah, Jimmy, and I kept him from just burying himself in work after you broke him, Dean.”

“I thought—” 

“—I know what you thought, Cassie told me.” Gabriel’s fire had cooled somewhat, now down to a simmer. “But I thought we were friends, Dean. I didn’t know about any of this, not Jimmy, not that whole Alistair Sharpe catastrophe. You never said anything to me, about any of it.”

“Gabe, I never told anyone who the father was. My family doesn’t even know. I haven’t even been able to tell Sam yet.”

“You never told Sam?” Gabe collapsed against the edge of the desk. 

“At first it was just because he was real adamant that I tell the alpha.” Dean held up his hands in surrender. “Which I fully realize now would have been the correct decision. I thought he might tell James, er, Castiel, behind my back.”

“And then?”

Dean sat against the desk next to him. “After the trial, I just wanted to go somewhere where people didn’t know what happened, where they didn’t stare at me as I walked down the street. Where I didn’t have to worry about someone else scratching ‘omega whore’ into the side of my car again.”

Gabe wiped his forehead with his hand. “God, Dean, I’m sorry man. I didn’t know. That’s why you were so skittish when you first started? I thought you were going to run from Benny after he knocked into you coming around that corner.”

Dean chuckled. “Almost did. Then Jessica swatted him on the shoulder for it and helped me up. I figured if a tiny little beta thing like her could hit him and it not bother him, he was probably okay.”

“Yeah, well, don’t fucking mess with Jessica. She will lay you out as well.”

“So, I learned. We good here?” Dean looked over at Gabe, appraising him. 

Gabe socked him in the arm. “For now, but I know where you live, Winchester.”

“Whatever, short stuff. This just means more kids to spoil for you.”

“Don’t forget it, either.”

 

Dean shot off a text to his brother. **To Sam:** _Hey, I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. What’s a good day for you guys?_  
He waited for the return text, tapping a foot, and drumming his fingers on the desk. He was so glad the kids took naps in his class. 

**To Dean:** _Tonight’s fine. Bring the kids and they can watch a movie or something._

Dean exhaled and started typing again. **To Sam:** _No kids, Charlie said she’d watch them._

**To Dean:** _Alright, what’s got your panties in a bunch?_

**To Sam:** _Nothing bad, there’s just some things I need to talk to you about. Don’t worry nobody’s dying._

**To Dean:** _Now I am going to worry. See you tonight, I guess._

Dean hesitated at his brother’s door, a 12 pack of Sam’s favorite IPA in his hands. Sam answered the door before he had a chance to even knock. “Dean, come on in.” Sam stepped aside as Dean moved past him. “Jodi should be back in a minute, why don’t you stick those in the fridge.” He grabbed two out of the pack and before stowing the rest. He handed one to his brother as they sat on the couch. 

“What’s this about, Dean?” Sam lifted the drink and took a sip.

“Can we wait until Jodi gets back? I’d rather not go through this twice.”

Sam nodded slightly. “Sure, whatever you need. Are you sure you’re okay?

“Sammy, please.” Dean sat forward, his elbows on his knees as he took a long drink. 

“Dean, you text me out of the blue saying that we have something important to talk about and now you won’t tell me? All Jodi and I could think was that something happened. Something like—”

“—Something like Alistair Sharpe?”

“Yes, Dean, something like Sharpe.” Sammy’s bitchface was in full force.

“It’s nothing like Sharpe and those scumbags, god.” Dean stood and scrubbed his hand down his face. “It’s the twins, Sammy, it’s their alpha.”

Sam’s mouth opened and closed without a word. Jodi opened the door, a grocery bag in her hands. “Dean, good, you’re here. Now, maybe Sam will stop freaking out.” 

Dean chuckled, “No chance of that. Samantha’s the little sister I never had.”

Sam’s bitchface intensified. “Dean, the alpha…you mean Novak?”

“How do you know? Did Jo tell you?” He took a step back, hitting the coffee table, then sitting down on it. 

“No, Jo didn’t say anything until I confronted her with what I already had figured out. I’m a lawyer, my wife is a sheriff, research is literally our jobs. You don’t think we couldn’t figure that out? There was only one event that you helped Ellen with, dumbass.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Sam shrugged. “By that point we weren’t talking. I figured that when we each got our head out of our asses, I would tell you. By that time, I don’t know, I decided to accept your decision.”

“But Novak is dead, right?” Jodi interrupted, “I remember Sam telling me that. Some kind of car accident or something?”

“Yes, James Novak and his mate are gone.” Dean took a long drink and closed his eyes. 

Jodi held up her hand, “Wait, when I got you out of Sharpe’s house, you were out of your mind with the drugs he gave you and in heat. But you were babbling about a Jimmy, that he was your angel. He saved you.”

Dean spun his head back and forth between his brother and sister in law. “You never told me about that.”

Jodi shrugged. “That’s because Charlie saved you, we had her as a witness as well as security footage. We, I, figured that it was someone that your mind remembered to help you deal with what was going on. The psychologist agreed, said unless you brought it up, not to mention it.”

“Huh, weird, I don’t remember that at all.” Dean furrowed his eyebrows together as he took another drink, collecting his thoughts. “He died right after that. That I remember seeing on the news while I was home.”

Sam shrugged. “There was no use at that point. The alpha died and you agreed to move out here to start over. We all agreed to just let it drop.”

Jodi cocked her head and looked directly at Dean, “Why are you bringing it up now? Did the Novaks find out and want visitation or something?”

“Or something.”

“What do you mean, Dean?” Sam’s lips threatened to withdraw completely into his mouth, they were pressed together so tight.

“I don’t even know where to start.”

Jodi reached a hand out and placed it on his knee. “Just start at the beginning, sweetie.”

“Okay, so you know how I was, in your words Sam, a ‘man-whore’ before the kids?”

“Dean, don’t—” Sam broke in. 

Dean help up a hand. “Not an undeserved reputation, Sammy. I slept with your prom date, on prom night. However, it seems the problem here was that I failed to get his name.”

“We know this, you told us this years ago.” Sam ducked into the kitchen to grab a second beer for himself.

“Right, so. That was problem number one. Problem number two was that I didn’t have another tiny bit of information.”

“What? What else could you not know, you saw him.”  
“He was an identical twin. It was never _James_ Novak, but _Castiel_ Novak. I know, only me, right? It’s like a fricken Hallmark movie.”

“My god, Dean! How? How did you even figure this out?” Sam slumped back into the seat of the couch. 

“His niece, James’s daughter, she’s in my class and that’s her guardian, Sam. Freaking Gabe is his cousin. I feel like my head is going to explode the last couple days.”

Jodi pinched her forehead and closed her eyes, “School’s been in session for a month and a half, you only just found out?”

“Yeah, because the universe wanted to crap on me some more. Cas has like a real corporate job, so an aunt brings her to school in the morning, Gabe takes her home at the end of the day. I didn’t meet him until back to school night, last Friday. Almost passed out right in my classroom.”

Sam sat up and scooted forward, “So this guy, Cas? He was never engaged?”

“Um, no,” Dean stared at his hands. “I screwed up so bad, Sam.” 

Dean shook his head as his brother and his mate took his hands in theirs. Jodi’s voice was soft. “No, Dean. You just have to be really careful now. Have you talked to him, told him about the twins?”

Dean nodded, sniffing back a tear. “That was who I had coffee with that night. Told him everything. Haven’t been able to stop apologizing to the man. Even gave him a picture of them.”

“That’s good. That’s a good start. What about Henry and Emma? Have you…?”

Dean scoffed, “No, ugh, I can’t even think about that conversation yet. They, um, met him though.” Sam and Jodi wore matching expressions of shock. “I told him that I would take the kids to the park yesterday, and he was welcome to bring Claire—that’s his niece. The kids thought it was some sort of play date.”

Sam brightened. “See, you haven’t screwed it up if he was willing to be there already. Did it—did it, go alright?”

Dean dug his shoe into the floor, “Emma invited them to your party this weekend.”

Jodi shot up in her seat. “Oh! Well, then. That won’t be awkward at all.”


	19. Chapter Nineteen

**CASTIEL**

_Castiel opened his eyes, sheets wrapped around his legs, the scent of his omega all around him. Dean stood in the doorway, his chest naked and glistening with the sheen of sweat from his heat. The aroma of their previous mating permeated the bedroom, combining into a heady mix. “Did the shower help?”_

_Dean smiled. “You know me, Cas. Cools me off for a little while, wakes me up.” His hand slowly drew up and down an aimless pattern on his stomach. The scent of arousal growing between the two. Dean’s hand moved up to the mating scar on his neck, pressing down on it as he rubbed._

_Castiel growled deep in his chest, he could feel the pressure on his matching mark. His cock was half hard again, they had already tied together a half a dozen times tonight and his heat was only halfway through the first full day. His beautiful mate’s heats usually lasted at least five days but now that they had been mated for a year, they were going for another child. With any luck, Dean’s heat would stop partway through and they would know that Dean had caught.  
Dean crawled up Castiel’s body, kissing as he went but deliberately avoiding his mate’s growing erection. Castiel grabbed Dean firmly by his hair and pulled him up to his face to kiss his lips. Their entire bodies lined up together with only a thin sheet between them. Castiel let his hand slide down Dean’s back and to his ass, his finger sliding over Dean’s already loosened hole. One slipped in easy, teasing the rim. He eased in a second, followed quickly by a third as the kissing turned more desperate. Dean nibbled his way down his partner’s neck, “You going to fuck me alpha? Fill me with your seed again until I pup? Breeed me?” _

_Castiel gripped Dean’s arms and flipped his lover onto his back, ripping the sheet out from between them. He dipped his fingers into Dean’s hole once more, then used the slick to rub over his throbbing erection. He pressed Dean’s knees apart and slipped his cock into the pink pucker, groaning when he bottomed out. He started thrusting more forcefully as Dean wrapped his leg around Castiel._

_“Fuck, Cas. So good for me.”_

_Castiel sucked into the mating mark on Dean’s shoulder. “I love you, Dean. I—fuck—you’re so wet on my knot. So needy for me, omega.” Dean keened under him and stretched his neck for more. He felt Dean’s hands move towards the omega’s ignored dick, and grabbed them, moving them up and over Dean’s head, holding in them in place. “You come on my cock, Dean. Can you do that?”_

_Dean nodded and Cas shifted Dean’s hips so that he was hitting Dean’s prostate with each thrust. The friction between the bodies was building, the only sounds now grunts and keens from the omega. Dean arched under Castiel as cum spurted out of the omega’s dick, Dean’s eyes rolling into the back of his head. Castiel bit into the mating mark again, not enough to break through the toughened skin of the scar, but to make Deal howl through the orgasm. A few more rough thrusts and Castiel’s knot locked into place. Castiel collapsed onto his mate with a groan._

Castiel awoke in his own bed, drenched in sweat and fresh cum. His sleep pants soaked. The dream, or whatever it had been, still vivid in his mind. Every glorious moment fresh and clear in his memories. He stripped his wet pants from his body, dropping them to the floor and went directly for the shower.  


Once under the water, he began to realize the extent of what he had imagined. At first, his mind strayed toward guilt. The first thing he dreams of after finding his omega—no, not his, the omega, was to objectify him like his previous abusers had. But the feelings he had during the dream would not be forgotten, and those were not just simple lust or hunger. Those were there, but it had been longing, hope, wonder, desire, happiness, love, mate. He remembered the feeling of amazement as he gazed on the mating mark on Dean’s neck, his mating mark. How it had felt mirroring his own. Most alpha/omega couples, only the omega carried a mark, but in a few the alpha did as well. Stories and studies were showing that these couples tended to have extraordinarily profound bonds, able to read the emotions of the other even across great distances. He had carried one in the dream and could feel the same emotions swirling back from Dean, creating a feedback loop of love and desire.  


He felt his erection swell again just by remembering the intensity of the moment. He grabbed his cock in his hand, letting the warm water create any lubrication he might need. Castiel leaned back against the shower, his head falling back as he closed his eyes and stroked. He could he see Dean in his mind, standing there in the doorway, his hand tracing patterns on his own skin as he watched Castiel. In his head, he saw Dean’s hand dip down and grab his own shaft and loosely stroke, the whole-time keeping eye contact. Dean’s fucked out, raspy voice, _“Do you like watching me, Cas? I love it when you watch me. Make me feel like such a naughty boy.”_ Imaginary Dean spread his feet apart, letting the aroma of his slick fill the room more. Dean’s other hand snaked behind him. _“Do you smell how wet you got me, Alpha? Are you going to make me beg for your knot while I finger myself, Caaasss?”_ God, he was getting close. Sometimes, he loved watching his partner fuck themselves desperately, often until they came, while they begged for him to fuck and knot them. Then, when they were at their peak, slamming into them rough and deep. When they had knotted all those years ago, Cas had teased Dean up to the brink several times. Watching Dean masturbate, then eating his dripping hole until Dean had been howling for a knot. Castiel popped his knot in the shower remembering the feel of the clenching walls of his lover coming from only his tongue up his ass. How Dean had been oversensitive as Castiel pounded him into the mattress as he came down, not giving Dean a break. Castiel massaged his knot and the massive amounts of cum that the alpha produced down the drain. There was no doubt in the alpha’s head that he needed to mate this man, and the sooner the better. The only real plan was that he had to win the children over first, then the omega would follow. 

  
**DEAN**

Saturday morning was more hectic for Dean than he wanted it to be. Jodi and Sam needed him to get to their place before noon and the twins were already making things difficult. Emma had lied to her teacher at school the previous day. Her punishment the night before left her sulky and dragging her feet all morning. He was aware that it was normal for their age, but he had wished that he’d had a little more time.  


“Daddy, Daddy, look!” Henry ran up to him in the kitchen and wiggled his front tooth with his tongue.  


Dean knelt and checked it, but it was still connected too well to just yank out. “Okay, champ, stop playing with it. Look at you guys, your first tooth to fall out. Make sure you don’t swallow it, okay Henry?”  


Henry’s eyes widened comically. “If I swallow it, will I grow another mouth in my stomach? ‘Cause Tony at school said if I swallow watermelon seeds, I’ll grow plants in my stomach.”  


Dean chuckled, the things the kids said were always making him laugh. “No, kiddo. You will not grow another mouth in your stomach. You will also not grow a watermelon plant from swallowing the seeds. I wouldn’t do either one though, you’d probably get a pretty bad tummy ache from all those seeds.” He looked directly into his kid’s eyes. “The kids at school ever tell you about the tooth fairy, though?”  


Henry shook his head solemnly.  


Dean held his son’s tiny arm in his hand. “Well, when your tooth does come out, we put it under your pillow when you go to bed. While you sleep, the tooth fairy comes and trades the tooth for money.”  


Henry’s face scrunched up. Dean realized now how much his son favored their alpha father and his breath caught. Henry’s eyes lit up. “How much money?”  


Dean threw his head back in laughter, “That will be up to the tooth fairy.”  


The kid grinned up at him. Then took off running to where his sister was still sulking. The doorbell rang and, Charlie walked on in. “What’s up, handmaiden?”  


Dean groaned at his best friend. “It was one time, Charles.”  


“Yes, and until you help us recapture the shadowlands, your knighthood will not be restored.”  


He rolled his eyes at her. “Of course, my Queen”  


“So, Dean. I get to meet Castiel today? He sounds dreamy.” Charlie rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet.  


He turned and walked further into the kitchen, pausing to turn and motion her forward. When she joined him, he glanced down the hall to where the twins were playing. “Charlie, you already checked him out. You know what he looks like.”  


“Were I not a flaming lesbian, I would marry him in a heartbeat. Super good looking, rich, powerful, good father, seems like a decent person. I mean, he supports omega charities and animal shelters. Like, if I were to make a perfect alpha, this would be the guy.”  


Dean scrubbed his hand down his face. “You’re not wrong, okay Charlie. But you know how complicated it is now.”  


Charlie grabbed Dean’s arm. “You don’t need to make it into everything right away. Just leave yourself open for something, okay?”  


Dean wrapped his arms around his best friend in a tight hug, placing a kiss in her hair. “I know. Thanks red, you’re the little sister I never had.”

Dean sat in one of his brother’s lawn chairs, a beer in one hand, sunglasses perched precariously on his nose. Emma and Henry were being chased around the yard by Charlie. Jodi and Donna were laughing about something near the sliding doors. If he knew the two of them half as well as he thought he did, he knew that whatever they were laughing about was not fit for delicate men’s ears and he would be shocked yet again by them. Sammy’s college buddy, Brady, was smarming by the barbeque with his latest conquest that looked barely legal. Dean never knew what his brother saw in the guy, but Sam swore he was a great guy.  


He turned his head around when he heard voices approach behind him and the giggle of a certain student of his. “Claire!” He stood and grinned at the sight of the blonde five-year-old and the alpha holding her hand. The scorching hot alpha, wearing a lightweight leather jacket over a tight, black tee shirt and jeans that did nothing to hide the runner’s thighs the man possessed. _I can’t wait until he turns around and I get a view of the other side._ Dean blushed at the thought as Cas smiled wide. Gabriel stepped out from behind Cas and put a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. Dean’s thoughts stumbled for a second when he saw his friend. “Gabe, I thought you couldn’t make it?”  


The shorter alpha popped a sucker in his mouth and shrugged. “Plans changed. Thought I’d come here and watch fireworks instead.” He waggled his eyebrows.  


Claire tugged at Cas’s hand. “Fireworks!”  


Cas leaned over and bopped the girl on the nose. “No, sweetheart. Uncle Gabe is making a joke.” He stood and scowled at the man, before returning his gaze to Dean. “I hope your brother doesn’t mind. He told me you invited him in the first place, so I thought it would be fine.”  


Dean waved him off. “No worries. Come on out, drinks are in the cooler over there,” he pointed towards the covered back patio. “Snacks too. Sam’s going to light up the grill in a little bit. There’s plenty. Jodi always makes enough to feed an army of alphas at these things. But then again, she feeds Sam every day, so she probably forgets what regular people eat.”  


A dark-haired whirlwind ran up to Dean and latched her arms around his legs, nearly causing him to fall over. “Daaaaaddy, I’m soooo thirsty I’m going to die.”  


“Okay, drama queen. Hang on a second. Make yourself at home, Gabe knows just about everyone, so have some fun, man. I gotta go take care of a child that is about to perish, it seems.” Dean chuckled and leaned over to scoop up his daughter and walk her over to the cooler in search of juice boxes. 

  
**CASTIEL**

Cas felt like he stood there for an eternity with his mouth hanging open after the 30 second encounter. Claire saw Henry and ran off to play with him. Gabriel nudged him with an elbow. “That went well, I thought.”  


Cas turned to his cousin again, shaking his head. “Why did I let you talk me into bringing you along again?”  


“Because I’m a charming rogue that will help you capture the fair maiden’s heart.” Gabe grinned.  


“I did just fine the last time.” Cas gritted out through clenched teeth.  


“Until you stopped talking to each other. I’m your go between if things get dicey, Cassie. Your translator, a babelfish from Castiel to human.”  


Cas was about to respond when the tallest man he had ever met suddenly loomed in front of him.  


“Sammy!” Gabe shouted.  


This was Sammy? The man held out his hand to shake Cas’s. The hulking alpha with the tense face of stone and lips pressed so hard together they had turned white and disappeared. Cas hesitated before taking his hand. “Castiel.”  


He was surprised the man did not try to crush the bones in his hand as they shook. “I’m Dean’s brother, Sam.” The man finally let go.  


Cas could feel the static charge between them. Dean had told him that he’d informed his brother and his mate earlier in the week and had said that the conversation had gone…alright. Clearly there was more that needed talking about.  


“Well, I’m going to go check out the snacks, ‘kay? Don’t you two crazy kids go too wild.” Gabe pointed finger guns at him before he scurried away towards the tables under the porch.  


“I’ve heard a lot about you, Sam.”  


Sam tilted his head, “Funny, I still can’t say the same about you.”  


Cas could feel his temperature rising along with the tension. He reigned the nervousness and anxiety in his scent back in, a talent he had from the business world. He would not—could not afford to lose his cool here. He would lose any chance with Dean or his kids if he did. He still raised himself to his full height (nowhere near Sam’s) and stood ramrod straight and head high. “Sam, I have no intention of hurting your brother—”  


“Again.” Sam broke in.  


Cas sighed. “Again, yes. I’m aware that Dean explained what happened between us. Rest assured that I was enthralled by Dean all those years ago and fully intended to pursue a relationship with him.”  


“How would you know? You had only had sex with him! That’s not enough to base a mating on.” Sam hissed.  


“I agree.” Cas held up a hand to stop Sam from raising his voice any further. He dared a glance around and luckily, no one seemed to be paying any mind to them. “But, for one thing, we had been texting and talking in the days after, before he shut me out. I was just as enamored of that man as the beautiful omega with the enticing scent.”  


A measure of tension had deflated out of the brother. “And your intentions now?”  


“Well, I’m still reeling a bit, but I would like a chance to get to know the kids, for them to know me.”  


“And with Dean?” Sam crossed his arms against his chest.  


Cas threw his hands into the air. “Whatever he lets me, it’s his decision. I would love to have a second chance, of course. But I’m realistic, too. If he can only accept me as a friend now, I’ll take that.”  


Sam stood for another moment in front of Cas, as if considering the words. He stuck his hand out to shake once more, this time the posture of each man much more relaxed. “Sam Winchester, Dean’s brother.”  


Cas grinned wide. “Castiel Novak.” He paused to consider the next words choice. “Friend of the family.” Sam gave him a small nod as they shook, and then walked to where the children were all playing before giving them a roar and chasing them around with ‘clawed’ hands.  


He scented Dean approaching before he saw him. He smiled at the man as he handed a beer to him. “Thought you might need it after meeting Sam.” Dean looked at the grass quickly before his face came back up to look at him.  


“He’s your brother.” Cas shrugged. “My sister, Hannah took some convincing as well, and I think you’re lucky Gabe already knew you.”  


Dean chuckled. “I’m aware of Gabe’s reaction already, thanks.”  


“He told me he wasn’t going to threaten you.” Cas frowned and took a deep pull from the bottle.  


“Yeah well, he didn’t, so you can pull back on the angry vibes, Cas.”  


He looked around sheepishly, but their scents had not carried to anyone else. “I’m usually much better at controlling myself.”  


“Maybe I just bring out the alpha in you.” Dean grinned, a tiny peek of tongue as he drank from his beer captured Cas’s attention.  


“I have no doubt of that, omega.” He fought to keep the growl from vocalizing but noticed the barest hint of spice threading into the orange scent.  


Dean ducked his head, “Cas—I—need time. I’m not saying no, just not right now.”  


“Of course, Dean.”  


He chuckled as the kids ran past them, a tiny red-haired woman chasing them. Dean snagged her arm as she scurried past. “Charlie. Hang on a minute.”  


“This is Castiel? I thought you’d be shorter.” She punched Dean in the arm playfully.  


“Charlie, this is Cas. Cas—Charlie.”  


The woman in front of him was practically vibrating. “Hey, Cas.”  


Cas smiled at the woman, “Charlie.”  


“Charlie here is one of my best friends. Tech aficionado and geek galore, so if you ever need anything like that, she’s your gal.” Dean tipped his beer at her.  


She nodded. “And as best friend, I have the permission to make your electronic presence disappear from the face of the earth if I need to.”  


Cas choked on his beer. “Excuse me.”  


Charlie winked at him, cracking a smile. “Just, you know. Putting it out there.”  


“Do you mind, Charlie?” Dean rubbed his forehead with his empty hand.  


Sam called out from the other side of the yard letting them know that the food was coming up. Dean nodded his head in his brother’s direction. “Come on. Let’s get some chow. I’m sure the kids are starving.”  


Cas ended up at a table with Claire next to him on one side and Sam’s friend, Brady on the other. If it wasn’t for the fact that Dean was directly across from him (Emma and Henry on either side) he would have found Gabe and sat with him. As a beta, and a friend of Sam and Jodi, Cas thought that this Brady character would have been—better. However, the half hour that they had spent next to each other had changed Cas’s opinion of that. Either, Sam and Jodi didn’t care that their friend was a sexist asshole who liked to demean his current partner (not likely) or he was careful to not show his true side around them. The man constantly made digs at his omega girlfriend about both her non-existent weight problem and her supposed lack of brains. If someone dared to call him on it, the girl would laugh brittlely as a joke, say that’s just how they were, that they liked to ‘tease each other’.  


Cas’s scent of petrichor had turned to thunderstorms, but as a guest in a precarious position, he felt he had no choice to say anything. He stood and tugged Claire’s hand, “Are you finished, Claire bear? Let’s go get washed up, alright?”  


Dean could barely meet his eyes, “Um, inside and first door on the left.”  


He went inside and let the coolness of the air-conditioning clear his head. Now that there weren’t a dozen different scents swirling around, he could pinpoint what had irritated him about the man. Dean had reacted to the words, not just the girlfriend of the douche. Each time the man made a snide comment, Dean seemed to shrink a little more. He was about to move away from the bathroom and find Dean, when the man himself entered with the twins.  


Dean smiled. “Looks like they had a war with the catsup and mustard out there.”  


“Would you say that these are the winners or losers?” Cas grinned back, his own hands stuffed into his pockets.  


“Winners, of course. After all, the names not Losechester.”  


Emma groaned and Dean pointed them to the hallway. “Go use the bathroom in Uncle Sammy’s bedroom, okay? And try not to get stuff everywhere, please.”  


Dean shuffled his feet as the kids bounded down the hall. “Sorry about Sam’s friend back there. Sammy said that he pulled his butt out of the fire like senior year, right before he went to law school, and he’s just going through a rough patch. Says he’s a good guy deep down.”  


“Very deep down from what I could tell.”  


“Yeah well, not my barbeque, not my guest list,” Dean flopped down on the couch. He patted the seat next to him. “How are you doing?”  


He sat next to Dean, taking in a deep breath, and letting it out slowly. “Probably same as you. I mean, this is not how I imagined things would be.”  


Dean cocked his head. “How did you imagine things, Cas?”  


He laughed, “For one, I didn’t think there would be a family party with you, and kids—Gabriel, and Sam and his mate. I mean, maybe a long time ago, I thought about that.”  


Dean smiled as Claire ran in from the bathroom and crawled on Cas’s lap. The alpha smoothed her blonde hair down and kissed her forehead. “Are you having fun, princess?”  


The little girl nodded vigorously. “Emma is my best friend.”  


Dean looked at her sternly, his eyebrows drawn together. “What about Henry? Is he your best friend, too?” A crack of a smile lifted one corner of his mouth.  


Claire giggled. “Mr. Dean, you’re silly! He’s Charlie’s best friend! He’s my friend too, but she’s his best friend.”  


“Well, she is his size. Makes sense, I suppose.” Dean continued in his gruffer than normal voice.  


Claire laughed again, to Cas it had been the best sound in the world for so long. Now he wondered if there would be other sounds joining it. “Well since you like them so much, I guess we have to let you hang out together more. Would that be okay?” Cas looked at Claire as he asked the question but snuck a glance to Dean to get a reaction from him, although his scent seemed pleased by the idea.  


Claire clapped her hands together. “Can they come over for Halloween? We could trick or treat together.”  


Dean nodded slightly as Cas answered. “I think so, but we have to make plans still. I’ll talk to Mr. Dean about it.”  


The five-year-old slid down Cas’s lap and ran to Emma when she saw her. “You guys are going to trick or treat at my house!”  


Dean groaned next to him. Cas turned to him, frowning. “I’m sorry, I overstepped. We should have discussed this privately.”  


Dean waved his had at Cas. “No, man. It’s fine. They have to get to know each other anyways. Halloween is sort of a nightmare with twins.” He slapped Cas’s knee with a grin. “As you are going to find out.”


	20. Chapter Twenty

**CASTIEL**  
The doorbell rang as Cas was attempting to put the finishing touches on his costume, tugging on a pair of long white opera gloves that belonged to his sister Hannah he intended to tuck under his sleeves. He hoped that it wasn’t trick-or treaters yet, it was still early, and his sister and her mate had not arrived to man the door!

He yanked open the door to find Dean, Henry, and Emma, dressed as Han Solo, a storm trooper, and Rey (respectively). Dean’s head cocked to the side and his mouth opened and closed like a fish without speaking. Cas sighed in relief, “Dean! Thank god, I thought it might be kids, and Hannah and Crowley aren’t here yet.”

Dean smiled, “No worries. I can do candy duty while you finish getting dressed as a…yeah, I don’t know what you’re going for.”

Cas held up his finger. “Hang on, you’ll see.” He smirked at the omega. He walked back towards the bedroom to grab his hat and let Claire know that the twins were there. “Wait for me, so we can show them our costumes, okay?”

Claire nodded, the antennae on her head wobbling in sync with her head. He arranged the large hat on his own head, spreading the tulle netting around so he could see but also that there were no obvious holes. He grabbed the metal water can that they had filled with dry ice and poured a small amount of water inside before closing the top. The fake smoke coming out the spout was very realistic looking. He grabbed Claire by her hand and walked back towards his guests. 

Dean started laughing as soon as he saw the pair, Claire in her bee costume and what he could tell now was a detailed costume. “A bee keeper? I never would have seen that coming, Cas.”

“Bees are an important part of our eco-system, Dean. If they go extinct, it could be the end of humanity as we know it.” He cocked his head, trying to imagine how Dean could not know this. 

Dean waved a hand dismissively. “I get that, Cas. It’s just a lot of costume to walk around in all night. You sure you’re not going to overheat in that or anything?”

“It’s fine, Dean. It’s very mild outside. Don’t worry, I got this.” 

The doorbell interrupted them, and a heavily pregnant Hannah strolled in, followed by her mate, Crowley. “We come bearing all the candy and sugar growing kids could need.” He announced, holding up several shopping bags full. 

Cas stepped forward and hugged his sister. “Han, Crowley, thank you for doing this for me. I know you would rather be at home with your feet up.”

“You know we don’t get many kids where we live, and Fergus gets grumpy if he doesn’t get to scare at least a few kids” Hannah laughed, stroking her belly, and collapsing into the overstuffed chair. 

Claire, in her bee costume, ran up to her Auntie Hannah and began to get on her lap. Cas stepped forward and grabbed her off before she could crowd her way onto her aunt’s lap. “Hey, honeybee, what did we talk about? You have to go easy on Auntie for a little while, remember?”

Claire nodded vigorously, “She has a pup-pup in her belly.”

“That’s right. In a couple months, your cousin Felix we be here.”

Crowley cleared his throat and pointed his head at Dean. Cas blushed and set Claire back on her feet. “My apologies. Dean—You’ve met Hannah, this is her mate, Crowley.” Hannah raised one of her hands from her belly to waive and smile at Dean. “Crowley, I would like you to meet my…friend, Dean. And these two cuties are Emma and Henry, h-his children.” Henry had lifted his stormtrooper mask and waved hello. 

Emma’s green eyes flashed as she pointed to Crowley. “She said that you were scary! You’re not scary.” 

Cas chuckled as he looked at Crowley, clad head to toe in his tailored black suit and red tie. “You’re really not.” 

“Well, little lady, I suppose I’m not, yet.” Crowley’s gravely British accent sounded amused. “But I have a lovely set of fangs and I will be a vampire by the time night is fully upon us.” He cackled and reached out his hands, curling his fingers as if to grab her.  
Emma shrieked and ducked for cover, laughing behind her father. 

Dean laughed, bright and unaffected by any darkness in his life. Cas made it his mission to hear that sound as often as he could. Dean clasped his hands together. “Well, you want to head out? The sun is starting to go down and we got a lot of houses to hit.” 

“Of course, Dean.” The barest smile crept from Cas’s mouth as he grabbed Claire’s hand. 

The sun had barely sunk below the hills and the air was just chilly enough for a jacket to be needed. Luckily for the men and their kids, the costumes provided enough warmth as they walked around. The children ran up and down each driveway with the energy that only kids on Halloween seem to have. Cas had folded the tulle up and rested it on the brim of the hat after he figured out how much it obstructed his vision. 

“You know, the costume you put together for Claire makes her look like the bee girl in that music video.” Dean remarked as they walked to another house.

Cas stopped to look at Dean, his head cocked to the side. “I don’t understand that reference.”

“You have to have seen it, Cas. The girl is dressed up in a bee costume and she’s dancing and she’s sad because she can’t find anyone like her. Then at the end, she finds a whole group of people just like her, dancing in the field. Everyone has seen it.”

Cas shrugged. “I haven’t. I’m afraid I’m not very up on current entertainment. Besides, Gabe is the one that made the costume.”

Dean chuckled as they started walking again, “Well, that makes sense then. I’m sure he knew you wouldn’t get it and was laughing the whole time about it.”

“I’m not so sure how I feel about that.” Cas knotted his brows together in thought. “Jimmy, er, my brother James, he and Gabe would prank me all the time. Said I was too serious. In a way, I’ve missed the practical jokes, but…”

“I don’t know what that was like for you, loosing a twin brother. If I lost Sammy, though, man.” Dean trailed off in thought, shaking his head.

“I miss him every day. I still forget and see something I want to tell him about and it hits all over again. Not as bad, or for as long, of course, but it’s still there.”

“I’m sorry, man.” Dean placed a hand on his shoulder, sliding it across until he was hugging Cas. He held him tight for a moment.

Cas broke away. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all maudlin on you.” He sniffled, turning his face away.

“No, Cas. I know things are—complicated between us. But don’t ever apologize for getting upset about what happened to your brother. You’re not a robot.”

Emma ran back to Dean, “Daddy, look! They gave me a big bar!” She waved the full-sized bar at her dad before noticing Cas. “Mr. Casteel, don’t be sad.”

Cas knelt down to her. “I’m okay, sweet pea.” 

She placed her tiny hand on his cheek and smiled at him. “Your eyes are sad, Mr. Casteel. You look like Henry when he was sick on Christmas.”

Cas glanced up at Dean, but the taller man waved him off. “Henry had his tonsils out last year. Don’t let her fool you, the boy was up to his ears in ice cream for two weeks.”

“I see.” Cas nodded. “That sounds like it was very serious, indeed. I had my tonsils out at about the same age, too. I remember a lot of ice cream and mashed potatoes.” He poked her in the stomach gently and she giggled. 

“Come on, Mr. Casteel! We have to catch up.” Emma grabbed his hand and tugged him forward towards where Henry and Claire were already at the next driveway.

By the time they made it back around to Cas’s house, Claire was asleep and slumped over Cas’s shoulder. Emma was walking but leaning heavily on Dean’s arm and Henry was riding his father’s back, hands clutched around Dean’s shoulders and neck. “I told  
you we shouldn’t have gone so far, Cas.”

Cas rolled his eyes as he shifted Claire’s weight to open the door. “I know, Dean. You were right.”

“I’m just saying. You said that you guys did apartment trick or treating before, the neighborhood thing is whole different ballgame. You had no idea what you were getting into.”

“Yes, well. I’ll be better prepared next year.” He reached up and grabbed the antennae off her head, tossing it on the counter. 

Crowley peeked his head out of the guest room. “Hey, Hannah conked out about an hour ago. She’s in here sleeping. You want us to go?” He trailed off, casting a glance at Dean and his exhausted kids. 

Before Cas could say anything, Dean cut in, “I’m going to get these two home before they crash on the floor here. This was fun.”

Cas’s inner alpha whined at the departure, but with his niece asleep in his arms and still dressed in her costume, he was in no better shape to continue the evening. Plus, he was still wearing the (no longer) white safety suit he found for his costume and was starting to roast in his clothes. 

Crowley stepped from the hallway, “Let me take care of getting her to bed, while you take off that ridiculous outfit and maybe shower.” He gently hoisted the sleeping child from Cas’s arms muttering to himself as he walked towards her bedroom, “Honestly! Covered head to toe as a beekeeper! Couldn’t have worn something a bit more flattering like…anything?”  
  
**DEAN**

The twins were fussy Sunday morning a few weeks later. Dean was worried that they had picked up a virus. Now panicking because he was supposed to pick Bobby and Ellen up from the airport that afternoon and if they were already cranky, the crowds at the terminal would make for a nightmare. Emma lay on the couch, her cheeks flushed. He checked her forehead and it was warm to the touch. His normally rambunctious daughter was listless and wanted to curl up under a blanket. Henry had crashed on the ez-chair and didn’t look any better. He went into the kitchen and fetched two juice boxes and a thermometer. He ran the thermometer across one child’s forehead, then the other and gave them their drink. They were each reading near 100, not horrible for kids their age, but certainly not a temp he was comfortable dragging them around at. 

Sam and Jodi were already out of town at a sheriff’s retreat or he would call him to pick up their godparents, and Charlie had a Moondoor weekend in Vallejo, so she was out. He thought, briefly, about waiting in the cell phone lot, and just grabbing them at the curb when they called. Cas! He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of the alpha earlier. Well, he was pretty sure he knew why, the alpha tied him up in knots and made him want to bend over the nearest flat surface and present. Omegas only represented five percent of the population, and because they were so rare, they were the most uncommon pairing. They were also far more intense than any other pair bond. Dean wasn’t sure he was ready for that kind of strong, overwhelming bond between an alpha and omega. An alpha’s claim on an omega was not only for life but changed the omega’s biology so much that they could only be aroused by their mate, only be impregnated by their mate. The claims that betas laid on omegas were weaker than an alpha, and they could be broken. That was one of the things that made Sharpe’s threat so awful, to be tied to the man for the rest of his life like that and at his mercy had left him with nightmares still. There was a measure of fear lingering after Alistair Sharpe, that some alpha would attempt to take what they wanted. After the attack, Dean had stuck to betas preferring their less possessive nature. 

Castiel though, Cas made his inner omega roll over and pant, beg to please the man. Honestly, the night they had spent together had been magnificent. Even without the twins, he would never trade the memory of their coupling for anything. He wouldn’t admit it, but it had played a large part in all his heats since then. Oh God! My next heat—what if—no he couldn’t think of that. Wouldn’t let himself think of the alpha like that. He could smell the arousal on himself. He conjured up the most boner crushing images he could think of, diarrhea diapers, Bobby in a speedo. Yep that did it. 

He picked up his cell and waited for Cas to answer his call, fingers tapping on the countertop. “Cas, thank god!”

“Dean? Are you hurt? Are the kids okay?” Dean could hear the worry sneak into his—the alpha’s voice. 

“The kids are fine. Well, they have a cold or something but it’s nothing.” Dean scratched behind his ear, squirming. 

“Do you need anything? I could bring over some Pedialyte or soup if you need me to.”

He sat on the couch, his forehead resting in his spare hand. “That’s kind of why I called you, Cas. I need to go to the airport to pick up Bobby and Ellen, but I can’t take them like this. Is there any way that you could come over and just be here for a couple  
hours?”

He could hear the sharp intake of breath on the other side of the phone. “Of course, Dean. I’d—be honored.”

Dean chuckled. “Cut it out, Cas. The kids trust you. I know that this isn’t what you meant, but you wanted to spend time with them.”

“Of course, Dean, what time do I need to be there?”

Dean pulled the phone away from his ear to look at the clock before putting it back to his ear. “Maybe an hour?”

“I’ll see you then.” 

After Dean ended the call with the alpha, he puttered around the house. He made sure the kids had doses of fever reducer and there was plenty of juice in the refrigerator. If he was going to be home, he would have made the kids soup, but as it was, he saw that there were a few cans leftover from his last heat. Cas could warm that up and see if he could get them to eat. He was still taking stock of the pantry when the doorbell rang. 

Dean was surprised to see that the alpha was laden down with a couple grocery bags full of supplies. “What’s all this?” he peered around him. “Where’s Claire?”

“I dropped her off at Gabe’s on the way here. It would be irresponsible of me to expose her unnecessarily.”

Dean patted Cas on the shoulder, grinning. “Of course.” He stepped aside to let the man in. “I gave them some ibuprofen about a half hour ago, so they shouldn’t need anything for a little while. If you do need to give them something, I try to alternate it with the Tylenol. I wrote down the doses in the kitchen as well as the number for the pediatrician, hopefully you won’t need that.”

Dean led Cas into the other room, where Cas began to unpack his bags. There was a ton of fresh vegetables and a rotisserie chicken inside. “What’s all this?”

“I’m going to make chicken soup. Normally, I would make the broth myself, but I didn’t have time.” He pulled a couple of containers of organic broth from the now empty bags, folding them up and placing them to the side. Dean continued to stare at him. He sighed as he flattened his hands on the counter. “I know what I’m doing, Dean. I have a child, too, you know?” 

Dean pointed a finger at him. “Right, sorry. I’m new at this too.” He knocked his knuckles on the counter. “I’m going to head out. Their flight lands in about an hour, and it should just take me that long to get there and park. Figure forty-five or so to find them and get the luggage, another hour back. I shouldn’t be gone more than three hours. I’ll have my phone on me in case something comes up.” 

“Of course.” He replied, then opened his mouth again and closed it quickly. 

“What is it?”

Cas titled his head, his mouth pursing together as he squirmed. “Are they—are they coming back here?”

“Relax, Cas, they’re going to bunk up at Sammy’s house. No meeting the parents today.” Dean grinned at the alpha as he shrugged his leather jacket on and grabbed his keys. 

Dean sat in the terminal playing candy crush on his phone as he waited for the plane to land. He checked the arrivals board again, still at least 10 minutes before the plane landed. Then he would still have to wait until they deplaned and walked to the main terminal. His phone beeped with a text **from Cas:** _The kids ate some soup and OJ for lunch. Henry seems better, Emma needed a dose of Tylenol. Sleeping now._

**To Cas:** _Thanks Cas. There’s no way I could have done this without help._

**To Dean:** _You’re not alone, Dean._

**To Cas:** _I get it. Plane is landing. Talk later?_

**To Dean:** _I’ll wait here then._

**To Dean from Bobby:** _Getting off plane. See you in five._

He locked his phone and tapped it against his leg as he waited. The relationship…er…situation with Cas was becoming fuzzy in his brain. The alpha and him had been spending a great deal of time together in the past few weeks. Cas getting to know his children, but also the two of them finding out about each other in a way that they hadn’t had the chance to before. He understood it was only his own hesitation that prevented the shift in their relationship from friendship and co-parents over to romantic partner. He planned to take full advantage of his godparent’s visit to get an outsider’s view on the whole thing since Sam, Jodi, and even Charlie had been Team Cas since nearly the beginning. 

He stood hoping to be able to see one of them over the crowd, but it was Bobby’s gruff curse of “Balls!” that had Dean finding their heads in the sea of people. He reached his godfather and was quickly enveloped in a hug, followed closely by one from Ellen.  
“God it’s good to see you, boy!” Ellen patted his back as she hugged him tight then released his body, only to keep hold of his forearms so she could check on him. She glanced around, a frown developing on her face. “Where are my grandpups, Dean Winchester?”

Dean grabbed her travel bag that was beside her. “Home sick. Both woke up this morning with fevers.”

Bobby snorted. “School was always a damn petri dish. Charlie watching them?”

Dean scratched the back of his neck, absently. “Um, no. She’s up LARPing with Glinda at a Moondoor event in Vallejo until tomorrow. I’ve actually gotten, um, Castiel to watch them.”

Ellen grabbed his arm and gently stopped him. “Castiel? The mysterious alpha you only told us about a few weeks ago, Castiel? Is there something going on between the two of you again?”

“No, El!” Dean threw his hand up into the air. “It’s just that now that everything is—you know—he’s been spending a lot of time with the kids! Getting to know them, you know putting in the effort.”

“Have you talked to Emma and Henry yet?” Bobby side eyed him as they walked, looking for tells in Dean’s expression. 

“No.” Dean felt the silence open between them. “Look, I wanted to wait at first to see if he was going to stick around. I didn’t want to be one of those people whose kids have a dozen ‘uncles’ before they’re thirteen.”

Ellen shook her head. “It’s been over a month though. Everything you’ve told us, and Sam’s told us is that he practically jumps at the chance to see them whenever you let him. I’m sure they’ve bonded with him already, at least on some level.”

“It’s just a really difficult subject to bring up. I was hoping the two of you might help while you’re here, though. You know, fresh eye. But first, lets get your bags so I can get you back to Sammy’s. You can have a nap and I can go home.”

Bobby smacked Dean on the back of his head. “Nice try, kid!”

“Ow, what was that for!”

Ellen smiled. “If you think for one minute, that you are not taking us directly to your house to see the kids and meet this Castiel, you are sorely mistaken.”

Dean grumbled just under his breath. “Fan—tastic.”

Dean juggled the suitcases in his hands as he unlocked his brother’s house, letting his godparents in. “Okay, so Sam and Jodi have you guys all set in the guest room, so why don’t you make yourselves comfortable. I’m going to call Cas, let him know you’re coming over, check on the kids.”

“Sure,” Bobby chuckled. “You go warn your angel boyfriend.”

“Oh, my god, Bobby!” Dean wheeled on the older alpha, throwing his hands into the air. “He’s not my boyfriend!” 

The older alpha only shrugged one shoulder and smiled as Dean walked out the sliding doors to make the phone call privately. It only rang once before Cas picked up. “Hello Dean.”

Dean shoved his other hand in his pocket. “Hey Cas.” He shifted the weight on his feet. “How’re the twins?”

“Their fevers are down, but they’re still pretty out of it. They fell asleep watching cartoons a little bit ago.”

“Listen, I know I said Bobby and El wouldn’t be coming over but, um…”

He heard Cas laugh on the other end of the phone. “I thought that might be the case. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, well, I figure that they need to rest up for a minute or two before we head over but shouldn’t be more than a half an hour.” 

“Whatever you need.”

Dean rubbed his forehead, “Yeah, sure. Gotta go, Cas.” He hung up before the alpha could respond, rolling his eyes. He felt bad about it and was sure that he would apologize later (maybe) but he would say something stupid if he stayed on the phone much longer. He took a minute before going back inside, he had to get his head together about the alpha. Yes, at one time he had wanted the man, hoped for a future with him. He was worried that too much had happened in the interim, however, the miscommunication, the pregnancy, but worst of all—everything with Alistair. No matter how much he felt drawn to the alpha now, the taint of the kidnapping and Sharpe’s threats, the taunts especially, had changed what Dean wanted from a relationship.

Before Alistair Sharpe, before the harassment and the kidnapping, he had wished and held out his hope for a strong alpha, someone that made him feel protected, not that he needed protecting. One of the things that had drawn him to Castiel in the first place was the power and strength that he held inside. Their liaison had been an example of this, Cas watching as Dean stroked himself, commanding him to hold his orgasm in for ages, then diving down and licking him open. Cas had eaten him out until he howled, nearly blacking out from the powerful orgasm. It was only then as he lay trembling and loose limbed that the man slammed his cock in, fucking him hard like he would have needed in his heat which he knew now that he had entered early partly because of the strong alpha. He had come again and again on Cas’s fat knot that night because of the strength and power that the alpha had shown him. 

He had felt safe and secure in that hotel room, in the arms of the alpha. Then Sharpe happened. Alistair Sharpe who had trapped him in one too many empty classrooms making first subtle, then not so subtle comments, about omegas, or Dean’s scent, or how someone like him would look bent over and held down. Alistair had Azazel break into his desk and his apartment to go through his things and to change out his suppressants—chemically induce a heat, then kidnap him. The fear that Sharpe had put into his mind about the control an alpha would have over him if they were to mate, never to even be aroused by anyone else ever again—even if the alpha should die. The omega was locked to them for the rest of their life. That fear niggled in his brain even now. The safety and security he had once sought with an alpha, he now feared as a lifelong prison, even if he loved that person. A beta would be easier, a beta he could leave, he could recover from if the relationship had not worked out or they should die. 

He tapped the phone against his forehead, frustrated by his fears. Pissed that someone had stolen the decision from him, at least in his opinion. Dean let out a deep breath and went inside without coming to any kind of choice in the matter.


	21. Chapter Twenty-One

**DEAN**

Dean sat in the waiting room of Dr. Moseley’s office. It had been months since he had seen the therapist, well before the news that the children’s alpha was not who Dean thought he was or that he was alive. Not to mention gorgeous, good with both Claire and the twins, single…The nurse called him into the office before he could get ahead of himself.

“Dean Winchester! It’s been too long.” Missouri wrapped her arms around him in a hug. She had the comforting scent of sunflowers and summer, but not too strong since she was a beta, just a mild earthy smell. He melted into her arms.

“Hi Missouri. Glad you could see me on such short notice.”

She smiled kindly as she sat down. He had liked her from the start because he felt that she simply guided him to the answers he already knew but was never pretentious about it. He had failed to connect to two other therapists before her, but she had won him over with kindness and some weird herbal tea that she made, something that he would never admit he drank outside the office. “I always make time for my favorite patients, Dean. How are those beautiful children of yours?”

“They’re fine. Getting over a bug they picked up at school, you know how that is.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Lord yes, my James would come down with something like clockwork every year just after school started. I swear they get those children together and its like they are licking dirt or something.”

He chuckled. “You’re not wrong.”

“What’s bothering you, honey? I know you didn’t book an hour with me just to gab about those precious angels of yours. I don’t think your insurance company would like that very much for one thing.”

He picked at the side of his fingernail with his hands in his lap. “A lot has happened in the last few months, Missouri. I swear, my life has turned into one of those cheesy telenovelas Bobby watches.”

“Well, just start at the beginning and we can sort this out, sugar.”

His voice was timid at first, telling her of the meeting between Cas and him at the school. The reveal of all those secrets. He was mildly amused that he had seemed to surprise Missouri with the news, up until today he had been convinced that she had mindreading capabilities. He talked for nearly a half an hour straight, only pausing for a drink of tea or for her to ask a clarifying question. It seemed that once he had started in on it, he had to let everything out to someone. “So that’s it, Doc. That’s the whole she-bang.”

Dr. Moseley sat back and blinked and took a drink from her own cup. “Well, Dean, when you have a problem, you don’t go halfway, do you?”

He laughed. “I’m a doer.” 

She took in a deep breath and plowed forward. “So, I’m guessing that you are having issues mainly with two things.” She held up one finger. “The first one is—well, I wouldn’t call it the easiest, but it’s the most basic. How to tell the children that Mr. Novak is their alpha sire, especially since from what you told me, he would want to establish paternity.”

Dean nodded. “I think so. We haven’t actually had the final discussion about it, but we’ve talked, and he has tried to get to know them far more than what I would have expected.”

She smiled again. “That’s a good start. That’s where I would begin. Sit down with him—alone and have that discussion, find out if he wants to move forward. If he doesn’t, I would recommend cutting all ties between him and the children as soon as possible so whatever bond between them can be broken. I know that sounds heartless, but if he doesn’t want to make that official with the children, then he has to go.”

Dean nodded, glancing at the floor then back up at her. “Of course. I agree with you totally, it’s just hard to hear from someone else.”

“I know, sweetie, but sometimes that’s what being a parent is all about, making the hard decision so that the children have a better life. You’ve done it before, so I know you’d be strong enough to do it now. I think you’ll be okay, though.” She winked at him and the butterflies in his stomach settled. 

“Now there’s the other thing.” She stood and moved over to the couch to sit down next to him. “I’ve been helping you deal with everything that happened all those years ago for a long time, kid. I told you when you first started that nothing was going to be easy and that when you’d least expect it, something would rear its ugly head and you’d be back dealing with the aftermath once more. This is what I meant.” 

He leaned back into the sofa and shut his eyes, nodding. “I know, Doc, deep down. But sometimes I wish there was a magic pill that I could take, and I would be back to being me.”

She rubbed her hand on his knee, “I wish that too, sugar. Trauma isn’t like that, though. We’re going to have to talk about this for a while, I think, back to regular sessions until you feel like yourself again. Then you can decide for yourself if dating, if mating with an alpha is something you’d be willing to do. But listen to me Dean,” She took his chin between her thumb and finger and forced him to face her, “whatever you decide, that’s your decision. Not Alistair Sharpe’s, not your family’s, not even this perfect alpha that you conjured up in your head—because believe me, he’s not perfect. You are the one that has to live with that decision and so no one else can tell you what is the right one for you.”  
  
**CASTIEL**

Cas woke up early Tuesday morning to his phone ringing. He knocked it off the nightstand as his hand hunted for it in the half light. The ringing stopped, only to start again immediately after. By the time his fingers curled around it, his mind was awake and had created forty-seven different possible scenarios for why someone would call that early. He noted the time (442am) briefly before the name “Crowley” flashed on the screen once more. Rowena, Crowley’s mother, sounded harried. “Cassie, time to get to the hospital. Hannah and your nephew will be needing you.”

Cas ran his hand down his face to wake him up more. “Is Felix there yet?”

“No, doctor says it’ll be just a few hours.”

Cas thanked Rowena and hung up, knowing the woman had several calls to make in between taking care of her son’s mate. He showered and dressed quickly, then crept into Claire’s bedroom to wake the sleeping pup. He sat next to her, stroking her back, gently nudging her awake. Her blue eyes opened, and she rubbed one with her fist slowly dislodging the sleep crust in the corner. Her grumpy morning face reminding him so much of James that sometimes his heart hurt for her. She crawled into his lap and hung her tiny arms around him. “I’m sleepy.”

He held her tightly against him in a hug, once more suddenly aware of the fear someone like Dean must have felt that his child would be removed forcibly from his care. This was his daughter, as much as she had been Jimmy and Amelia’s. “Me too, sugar bean.”  
He pulled her out of the embrace just enough that she could look at him. “We have to go to the hospital to see Auntie Hannah, though.”

Her tiny face scrunched up, “Is she sick?”

“No, baby. You know how I told you how the baby was in her stomach?” He pressed some of the wilder blonde hairs down to her head as he petted her hair. 

Her big eyes suddenly widened to nearly twice their size. “Cousin Felix?”

Cas nodded. “Yep, Auntie Rowena just called and told me. Hannah is having the baby right now and if we go to the hospital, we can meet him.”

Claire slid off his lap in a hurry, landing on her butt. Only to get back up and grab his hand to tug him up. “Come on, Papa Cas! We have to hurry!”

He stood, chuckling, “Okay, but you have to put some clothes on and at least brush your teeth. Not meeting your cousin all stinky!”

 

By the time he made it out of the house, he had managed to get Claire dressed and her teeth brushed. They arrived at Morningstar Memorial Hospital and up to the labor and delivery floor, having compromised and let her hair remain in sleep braids for now, he knew he had to pick his battles. At least she had not protested when he stopped at a drive through for a coffee and a bit of something to eat for her. Now, freshly cleaned off in a hospital bathroom, they waited with a few other relatives for the word from Crowley. Rowena was engrossed in a heavy tome she had brought to pass the time. Hannah had told her that the witch had been giving her daily brews that would ease her symptoms and help with labor when it happened. Cas was glad for that, Amelia had been taken in for a c-section after she had gone too long in labor. He still had no knowledge about what it had been like for Dean with the twins. He knew his scent was souring when Gabe shot him a dirty look. He shrugged at the shorter man. 

Gabe stood and grabbed his arm as he walked by. “Come on, let’s get some coffee.”

Cas turned his head to look back at Claire as his cousin dragged him away, but she was being read to by another cousin, Ion, who sat with his own small child. “Claire, though, I shouldn’t leave her.” He tried to protest. 

“Claire’s fine. She’s in a room full of family, what’s going to happen? She gets coddled to death?” Cas glared at his cousin who ignored him. “Relax, Cassie. God, if you were any more tense, I would say you weren’t getting laid.”

“I not—”

Gabe reeled back, “You and Dean, you aren’t doing the dirty by now? Jeez, Cassie, I thought you’d be all over that.”

The growl rumbled in Cas’s throat. “I am not _all over that_ as you so crudely put it. And you should not talk about him that way. He’s your friend too, you know?”

“Ugh, put your alpha back down for a minute, Cas. I just thought that you’re always over there, or he’s taking the kids to your house. It’s not like you don’t have history.”

Cas punched the buttons on the crappy coffee dispenser in the crux of the family waiting areas, coffee flavored water poured out into paper cups. “History is the fucking problem, Gabe. I missed so much. Plus, there’s that whole other issue.”

Gabe sunk back against the wall, eyeing his cousin from the side. “Has he said anything about what happened? I know it affected him, but he doesn’t talk about it to me, hell I didn’t even know that was him until you told me.”

Cas held the too hot cup between his thumb and forefingers, glancing down at the floor. “Only that first night. He didn’t even tell me really, just pulled up some old news article about it and showed it to me.”

“That’s some messed up shit.” Gabe pulled out a candy and pupped it into his mouth. “Come on, let’s head back. Today is for Hannah and Crowley, tomorrow we work on you winning over Dean.”

Aided by her mother in law’s spells and brew, Hannah’s labor was indeed relatively short, and Felix Montgomery Crowley was born on November 19 at 821 in the morning. When Gabriel counted backwards 40 weeks later that day, he vowed to never let his cousin Hannah and her mate live down the fact that they had conceived on Valentine’s Day of all days.


	22. Chapter Twenty-Two

**CASTIEL**

Castiel paced in his living room as he argued on his cell with Baltazar. Usually his business partner and him were in sync, but since the attempted hostile takeover by Roman Industries, things had been…stressful. Baltazar was organizing a stock buyback, but they both worried that Dick Roman would be return to finish what he started, hopefully not until the new year though. Luckily, most shareholders had sided with the company since it was likely that Roman wanted to dismantle Novak Corporation. They were on the forefront of several crucial civil and environmental rights movements that impacted Roman Industries shadier dealings. The real reason they had held him off so far was that family still held the largest portions of the stock at thirty-five percent, they had only needed a much smaller fraction to agree with them and not sell out. Luckily, a small chunk was held by one person that had sided with Novak Corporation, that person had made it enough to hold Roman off for now. Unfortunately, neither Baltazar nor Cas knew who that person was, all voting had been done through their proxy and the holdings were under the name of a corporation. Both business partners felt it necessary to speak to this mystery investor, but not even Rowena could figure out who it was. 

As far as how to fight Roman off in the future, they differed in opinion. Castiel felt that since the company was so progressive and had such a diverse staff, they attracted people to work for them that had a lot of the same concerns and beliefs that they did. He wanted to institute an employee stock purchase program. It was his opinion that these people would be as, for lack of a better term, invested in the company. Baltazar favored a more conservative approach by changing the corporation’s by-laws and instituting a dead hand provision, but Castiel knew that it could be challenged in certain jurisdictions as a violation of shareholder’s rights. He knew that they would not come to a conclusion over the phone and he would have to go in. His current role in the company did not allow him to make this decision, but as the founder and a majority stockholder, he was sure he could get his friend and business partner to listen. They agreed at least to postpone any decisions until after the holiday. After all, nothing could be done until then anyways. He hung up angrily and paced the room. 

He could feel the irritation in him rising, he had helped build his family’s business to the conglomeration that it was today. No corporation was perfect, but they had done their best to do right in the world. Dick Roman was like water on a duck’s back when it came to accusations of impropriety, everything just rolled off. He had to get out of the house. Claire wouldn’t be back from school for another hour or two. 

 

A run had been an excellent idea. Sweat out the frustrations that had been building in the weeks and months. He had gotten out of the habit of doing this daily. His feet pounded out a rhythm on the pavement as his thoughts melted into the background. His worries about the company, about Dean and the children, about everything. The tee shirt he was wearing on the November afternoon was becoming drenched with his sweat even though it was relatively cool. He suspected that it wouldn’t be too much longer before jackets would be required, even here in sunny California. Sure was different than Chicago. 

He headed back after a while, it was getting closer to the time that Gabe would have Claire home from school, and he would still need a shower. The walk up to his house made him realize that it had significantly cooled down, and although he had stopped running, a burst of sweat had drenched him even more by the time his house was in view. His house that currently had a black Chevy Impala parked in front of it. He approached it cautiously, but no one was inside.

He stepped inside his front door and saw Claire and the twins through the window in the back yard. He didn’t notice Dean behind him in the kitchen until he heard the glass drop. “Cas!”

He turned around to see the omega wide eyed and stiff as a board. “Dean.” He stepped forward towards the man but that caused Dean to wake from his momentary paralyzation and scurry deeper into the kitchen. He could hear cabinet door slamming.

“Sorry about the mess, Cas. You got a broom or something I can clean this up with?” 

“Dean, wait!” Cas called out to him. 

Dean peeked around the entrance. Cas could see that the omega’s nostrils flare as he stood there. He looked down at his sweat saturated clothes and realized how intense his scent must be to the other man. He stepped backwards, nearly stumbling over his own chair. “There’s a broom in the hall closet there. I’m just going to go get cleaned up real quick.” He stood up straighter and ran a hand through his hair. “You going to still be here when I get back?” the omega nodded wordlessly.

He headed into his bedroom, to grab a change of clothes, before taking the fastest shower of his life. Dean was in his home and Cas knew that he smelled like an overwhelming, too dominant alpha covered in sweat the way he was. From every reaction he had watched from Dean, that would be the last thing the omega would find appealing right now. If he had any chance of winning him over, it had to with decidedly un-alpha like behavior. For a second though, he thought he had smelled arousal, but there was too much anxiety that filled the air immediately after that he could not be sure. He finished his shower and threw on the pair of jeans and tee he had brought in with him and went to greet his guest. 

“Dean?” He called out as he arrived back in the living room. The man in question was silhouetted against the glass doors watching the kids and drinking a glass of water. He watched a drop escape his lips and slide down his throat before Dean turned around. 

“Hey, sorry to surprise you. Gabe got caught at school with an incident in his class and I said I’d drive Claire home. He was supposed to text you.”

Cas waived him off. “You’re fine. I didn’t bring my phone with me on my run anyways.”

“You can’t do that, Cas.” Dean stepped towards him, reaching a hand out. “What if something happened?”

He tilted his head and scrunched his brows together, “I stay on well-travelled jogging trails, Dean. Nothing is going to happen to me.”

“Okay, say nothing happened to you.” Dean rubbed his forehead. “What about Claire, Cas? What about Henry or Emma? What if something happened to m—one of them? For Christ’s sake, you can’t just run off by yourself for an hour without someone being able to get ahold of you.”

The omega was upset, Cas could smell the burning flowers in his scent. The thought of one of the children having an accident and no one being able to contact him punched him in the gut, he felt the breath go right out of him. He felt dizzy, he bent over with his hands on his knees and began to sweat once again, only this was stress sweat. The acrid scent burned even his own nostrils. “Are you alright?” He heard Dean’s voice, but it sounded far away. Suddenly there were hands on him, guiding him to sit on the couch.

He gathered his breath enough to speak. “I feel sick.”

Dean leaned back slightly. “Well, let me know if you’re going to hurl. You want a trash can or something?”

Cas shook his head. “I feel like an idiot.” 

Dean’s hand was warm through his shirt as it rubbed circles into his back. “Well, we all do dumb stuff sometimes.”

Cas turned slightly towards him, his eyes wide. “I always take my phone with me. I mean, it’s almost always with me because work calls me whenever, but it’s also my playlist when I run. I just got so irritated with Baltazar before I left, I needed the quiet and I  
didn’t think. God what if something had happened?” he lowered his head to rest between his knees.

Dean continued stroking his back. “Shhh, don’t worry. Nothing did. We’ve all screwed up a time or three as parents.”

Castiel sat back up and slumped back into the couch, his hands to his face as he attempted to control his breathing. “I’ve screwed up so many times, Dean. I had no idea what to with a baby when James died. And now stuff like this? I wouldn’t be surprised if  
you never wanted to tell the twins I’m their alpha.”

Dean’s voice was small. “What…uh…what do you want, though?”

“What do I want?” Cas let out a strangled laugh as he sat up and studied Dean. “Of course, I want to tell them. Take the blood test, whatever you need me to do, Dean.”

“Slow down, alpha!” Dean held up a hand to him but smiled. “I still think it’s still a little soon for the conversation with the kids, but we can definitely talk about getting you official.”

A thousand butterflies erupted in Cas’s stomach and he could feel his eyes shining. “Let’s do it. Just tell me where and when.”  


**DEAN**

Thanksgiving served to be stressful for Dean, more so than usual. They had done the lab tests a few days previously, and even though they both had no doubt in the result, it would be a few weeks before it was official. This would be the last step before he could be added to the twin’s birth certificates. Every once in a great while, Dean still had moments of anxiety about that—that the alpha or his family would attempt to take them away from Dean. Dean had socked away part of the settlement for that contingency, although hopefully that would end up as part of the kids’ college fund. No matter what happened, however, he would not be the naïve pregnant twenty-two-year-old and bury his head in the sand about the possibilities. 

He longed for the alpha as he had not done since the first days after their coupling years ago. It was harder every day to resist the pull towards the man. He had thought that Cas was willing as well, but sometimes—like the time a few days previously that Dean had dropped Claire off after school. He knew that Cas noticed the smell of arousal over his wild scent after a run. His pheromones and sweat mixed up to create an intoxicating aroma that had Dean lunging forward when the smell slammed into him, dropping the glass in his hand. Cas had nearly fled from the scene. Not that Dean was much better, but at least his stink of arousal had then been overcome by embarrassment. Cas’s scent turned from sex on legs to anxiety and shame? when he scented Dean. His alpha (he could admit that to himself now) was ashamed of him. It had made sense after the horrible events with Alistair Sharpe after all. Who would want an omega that was that unclean, that worthless? 

He muddled through the prep for cooking the next day. Three pies (cherry, apple, and pecan) were already made, two chilled layer desserts in large casserole dishes, and so much chocolate and candy. He was going to get diabetes from looking at everything. He was mostly just really glad they had an extra refrigerator and freezer in the garage. There were cut veggies on a platter for people like Sam to munch on, along with crackers, cut up cheese, and two different dips. Tomorrow he would get up and do the turkey and all the trimmings. Prepped this way, it didn’t take too long, and he could still interact with everyone that would invade the house. 

The doorbell knocked him out of his reverie. He threw the hand towel he used to wipe his hands off over a shoulder and went to the door. He was surprised to see a rumpled looking Cas. “Cas! What’s going on? Did I forget you were—”

The alpha cut him off, “I’m sorry, Dean. No, you didn’t forget anything, and I didn’t call. I know I don’t have any right to just barge in on you unannounced.”

Dean stepped back from the door and motioned him in. “No worries. If nothing else, we’re friends, right? Friends drop in.” the smile on his face felt tight.

Cas was twitchy, his eyes brighter than normal and his alpha scent, already strong on a normal day, seemed to fill the space. “I—I am your friend, yes.”

The smell of petrichor began to turn towards a downpour of sadness. Dean stepped towards the alpha and laid a hand gently on his arm. “Cas? Is something going on?”

Cas turned in his spot and saw the amount of activity Dean had going on in the kitchen and began to start back towards the door. “I’m sorry, Dean. I’m interrupting your holiday. I should not have come.” 

Dean stepped between Cas and the door. “Hold up, I’ve pretty much done all I can do tonight. I was about clean up and get some take out and have a beer. The kids are at my brother’s, what’s going on?”

A keening sound came from Cas as he strained and then collapsed into the couch. “I have to leave.”

“You kind of just sat down.” Dean sat next to the alpha, his hand gently rubbing along the man’s knee. 

Cas wiped his forehead, “No, next week. I have to go to Chicago for work. We are meeting with the board and hopefully securing our positions against another attack from Richard Roman.”

“This is about the takeover bid?”

Cas cocked his head. “How do you know about that? I don’t remember saying anything? Was it on the news?”

Dean chuckled, “No, Cas. I…uh…own a few shares.”

“When?”

“When what? When did I buy them? Not recently if that’s what you’re asking. No, my financial guy advised me to invest most of the…um…settlement. I had already looked into Novak Corp. because of James, they assured me it was a sound company to invest some money in. Kind of wished I had stumbled upon a picture of you, though. Would have saved us so much trouble.”

“Dean, I could just as easily say I should have seen you in one of the pictures from the trial, now that I’ve looked there were so many. I was so—wrapped up in the death of my twin and raising a child that I had no idea what to do with, that I sort of blocked out the outside world.”

“Well,” Dean smiled. “Let’s both agree that there were many missed opportunities.”

The gummy smile that Dean received from Cas made his breath hitch. Dean clapped his hands against his knees, then stood. “I’m going to clean up the kitchen real quick, then lets go get some Chinese or something? What do you say?”

“That sounds wonderful but let me help.” Cas stood but Dean waved him back down. 

“Shh, no. This will just take me a little while to throw everything in the fridge. You sit and relax, besides, you’re a guest.”

He escaped into the kitchen before the alpha could respond, rushing around to wrap things with plastic wrap and put them away, throw stuff in the sink with a quick rinse. He knew it was silly and that he would have to really clean it up later, but the thought of  
Cas out there on his sofa, obviously in some sort of pain called to him to get back as soon as he could. His omega instincts at war to provide for his family and to care for his alpha. 

As he returned to the living room just a few minutes later, Cas had dozed off, his head lolling against the accent pillow. Dean carefully walked past the sleeping alpha to the hall closet and removed a blanket, draping it over the man. He gently slid Cas’s shoes off and lifted his legs and feet onto the couch. He looked so much younger and carefree in his sleep, not that he was much older than Dean, only four years, but he seemed to carry so much more on his shoulders. He went into the bedroom and ordered Chinese food to be delivered, making sure to note that they not ring the bell, but text when it arrived if they wanted a tip. Luckily, as frequent customers of Yi’s, he knew they would get it right. He quietly made his way back into the kitchen to finish cleaning up and wait for food. 

Cas woke from his nap just as Dean was pulling some bills from his wallet to pay the driver and return with the food. “Hey sleepyhead. I hope you don’t mind, I just got a double serving of what I wanted since you were conked out. And a bunch of paper wrapped chicken, but I might fight you for that.”

The alpha sat up and yawned. Dean found it ridiculously charming how the man’s hair was sticking out in ten different directions and still managed to merely look ‘artfully disheveled’. “I’m sure whatever you picked is fine, I’m not terribly picky. I wouldn’t say no to some Crab Rangoon, though.”

Dean was busy opening the small white containers all over the coffee table between them. “Here, that looks like them.” He handed Cas a container and a pair of chopsticks. “I’ll get us some plates and maybe a serving spoon or something?”  
Cas popped one of the crispy bites into his mouth, only to find that it was still quite hot and had to breathe harshly out his open mouth, attempting to cool it down while he ate it. He finally swallowed. “Oh my god! This place must be around the corner or something, that’s still lava hot inside.”

Dean winced. “Sorry, I forgot that you’re not from around here. Yeah, Yi’s is about two blocks down. Sammy used to have a class with the niece of the owner, so they all know us. I would normally just pick it up myself, but you were asleep, and I didn’t want to leave you. Alone, I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

Cas let the comment pass without comment and took a plate and began dishing out a serving of everything. He sat back and stared at Dean, his eyes seemed to not blink as he watched him. Dean finally slid back into his chair with his own plate, avoiding the gaze of the alpha. “Is there something you wanted to say, Cas?”

The corners of Cas’s mouth turned up slightly. “No, Dean. Why do you ask?”

“Because you’ve been doing the staring thing for like five minutes. Like you’re trying to see my soul or something.” 

“I’m making you uncomfortable.” Cas looked down at his plate in his hand, slowly grabbing a piece of sweet and sour chicken, unable to lift it to his mouth.

“No, man, you’re not. Although sometimes I think I’ve got something on my face when you stare like that.” Dean shrugged. “Nobody else looks at people, at me, like that.” The last words were almost too low to be heard, and he followed it by stuffing his mouth full of food so he would not have to say it again. 

Cas tilted his head to the side. “Looks at you like what?”

“Like they are actually seeing me.” He felt his cheeks flush as he said it.

“I assure you, Dean. Every time I have looked at you, I see you and I am thankful that in all the thousands of years that man has walked the Earth, I am humbled that I was lucky enough to be here, at the same time that you were.”

Dean ducked his head, shaking it. “Jesus, Cas. You can’t just say shit like that.”

It wasn’t until Dean finished a third drink that he realized how late it was, how comfortable he had let himself get with the man. The conversation dropped to an awkward silence as they both realized the time. Cas stood, patting his pockets for his keys, looking around for where he had left his coat when Dean reached out and grabbed his hand. “Stay?”


	23. Chapter Twenty-Three

**CASTIEL**

Cas’s eyes were blown wide as he stared at the omega. “You want me to stay?” Dean barely heard the longing whine from Cas’s throat in the question. He dropped his gaze, letting his head fall to the side, the traditional submissive pose for an omega. Dean felt a hand on the side of his face, lifting his chin up to look at the alpha. “I—can’t bear it again if this—”

The next words from Cas’s mouth are cut off by Dean angrily butting in, “Forget it Castiel, if you’re not…well, I’m not some—”

“Dean, stop!” Cas threaded his alpha voice into his words. “You didn’t let me finish. What I was going to say was, I couldn’t bear it if we start this, and then I lost you again. I know that I promised not to push you, I’ve done my damnedest to do right by that. Every day that I see you though, that I have the children with me, all I can think is how much time we lost together.”

This time when Dean cut off the words coming from Cas’s mouth, it was because he had swallowed the other man’s words in a deep kiss. He broke away only to catch his breath and ask, “Does this mean you’re staying? I mean, you have to be back tomorrow anyways.”

“Dean Winchester, you are such an idiot sometimes.” Cas’s lips spread into a grin as he leaned in to kiss down the man’s neck.

_I love you too._ The words echoed in Dean’s head as he realized that his brother had been right, not that he would ever admit that to Sam, or Jodi for that matter. The combined scents of their arousal was overwhelming, but finally Dean broke away and led the other man by the hand to the back to the bedroom. As they resumed kissing, Dean could feel the slick drenching his panties. He tensed slightly at the thought of Cas not wanting him in the sexy lingerie. 

Cas felt the hesitation and pulled back with a frown on his face. “Dean, what is it? Are you not ready? We don’t have to do anything tonight. You know that, right? I could wait forever if I knew you were on the other side.” He rubbed his hands up and down Dean’s upper arms to soothe him.

Dean took his bottom lip between his teeth and stepped back, looking up at Cas through his eyelashes. “It’s not that, Alpha.” he purred. He took another step back, his fingers undoing the buttons on his shirt as he slipped it off his torso. He could feel, rather than hear, the answering rumble from Cas’s chest. He decided that Cas would not mind the lacy underwear at all, probably would think they’re sexy. “Something I want to show you.” Dean popped the button at the top of his jeans before slowly dragging the zipper down. He groaned at the relief his cock felt from being released from their denim prison. Turning until he was almost facing entirely away from the alpha, he slid the jeans slowly off his ass and down his legs. The crotch of the purple satin would be visibly wet with the slick now leaking down his legs. He maintained eye contact with Cas the entire time, and if the fact that the man’s eyes were nearly entirely alpha red was something to go by, the alpha seemed to be fine with the sexy underwear.

His brain was broken. That had to be what was going on here. He must have died or had a stoke on Dean’s couch and he was either in heaven or his mind had trapped him in the ultimate fantasy. The small step backwards by Dean, with the wicked smile on his face as he tried to look demure. First stripping out of the dark button-up he had been wearing. As attractive the man was clothed, it was nothing on Dean naked. The firm figure so unlike most omegas, strong and muscled—but not too toned, just solid. The starburst and pentagram tattoo on his chest there like he remembered, Dean had said it was for protection, but Cas never knew from what. If all that wasn’t enough, the omega had turned around so that his ass was presented to the alpha as it was exposed out of the jeans. _God god! Is he wearing panties?_ He could feel his eyes going alpha red, just as Dean’s had begun changing to omega gold. 

He stepped forward as Dean pulled the pants off his feet, the wet underwear pressing against his own slacks that had a damp spot from his own precum. He gripped Dean in his arms and moved him to stand upright against him, the omega’s bare form so vulnerable against his own mostly clad one. “Dean, Dean, Dean…” he nuzzled against the man’s neck as one hand moved down Dean’s torso and palmed the man’s erection. Dean knocked his head back and moaned at the sensations. 

“You going to take off your clothes and come to the party, Cas?” Dean reached a hand up and around to pull their heads together into a filthy kiss. They stood in each other’s embrace like that for what felt like both seconds and years. 

“Get on the bed, omega. Leave those pretty panties on though.” Cas growled at Dean. 

The taller man slipped out of Cas’s grip and climbed onto the bed, crawling on his hands and knees until he rested in the middle, presenting ass up and head down, the purple satin nearly soaked the entire backside as rivulets ran down his thighs. A high keen sounded as Dean waited. “Shh, don’t worry, omega. I’m here. I just wanted to look at you for a minute.” Cas had quickly discarded his shirt and then ripped off his pants and boxers in one go. He stood behind the man and stroked his own large cock before kneeing onto the bed behind the omega. 

At the touch of Cas’s hands to Dean’s bare legs, the omega shivered as if his nerves were on fire. Perhaps they were, that’s how Castiel felt. He moved his hands up towards the leaking source. Finally, he reached the lacy edge of the satiny underwear and slipped it aside to expose the omega’s hole. A sole finger traced the outside if the pucker and coated his fingers in the juices. He removed his hand and sucked his finger into his mouth, savoring the fact that the omega tasted like ambrosia. Cas placed his hands back on Dean’s ass and spread the cheeks apart so that he could lean into him and lick it from the source. Cas used a thumb to slide the fabric back aside and ran his tongue along Dean’s crack, drawing a broken moan from the man. The sounds continued as Cas teased Dean by swirling his tongue around the hole but not penetrating. Finally, Dean was pleading for something to fill him up and Cas breached to hole with his tongue, sucking and licking every drop of slick out of Dean that he could. Dean was writhing and pressing his ass against the alpha’s face. Cas pulled off, “On your back, Dean. I want to see your face.” 

 

**DEAN**

Dean froze at the words. His brain transporting him back years to the stinking bedroom that Alistair had kept him in. Cas stopped his ministrations and sat back on his heels. “Dean?” Dean could smell his own scent go acrid at the memory and he whined at the loss of connection from the alpha. Cas laid a hand against the omega’s face and turned it back towards him. “Dean? What is it?”

Dean grabbed a blanket to cover himself and made to turn his body away. “Cas, please.”

Cas wrapped Dean in his arms and slid down to spoon the younger man. “Shh, Dean. Don’t worry about anything. I don’t want to be with you just because I like your scent, or I like knotting you. I want to be with you. If that means holding you while we fall asleep, then I’ll be the happiest man in the world. Now, shush baby. We don’t need to do anything else, there will be other evenings, other mornings for us to enjoy each other. Now, I know you are upset and you should rest. Tomorrow is going to be very hectic, let’s just try and get some sleep.”

Dean nodded and pressed closer to the alpha without a word, his scent mellowing out from anxiety and anguish to at first ease, then the spring like aroma of pleasure and contentment. 

He awoke the next morning, the smell of alpha in his sheets, but the man had left the bed already. Dean slid over to the other side and drank in the scent of his alpha. A rumble was heard behind him and he rolled back over and got lost in the sight of the man fresh out of the shower. “Heya, Cas.” His voice still rough and deep from sleep. “What time is it?”

“Mmm, still early. Sun is just coming up.” Cas leaned over to kiss Dean, lingering to take his lower lip between his teeth. “Did you want to get into the shower?”

Dean scrubbed a hand through his hair, scratching his scalp. “Probably shouldn’t have everyone over smelling like sex and alpha.” He grinned lazily at Cas.

The alpha smiled in return. “Well, I wouldn’t mind so much. Would be a bit distracting, though.”

Later in the morning, after showering and pulling on an old pair of jeans and a zep tee, Dean wandered into the kitchen following the smell of coffee. The sight of Cas in the room, frying up eggs and bacon made his heart flutter. He could tell the second that Cas caught his scent, the alpha perked his head up and looked him in the eye. “I know you said you had a lot to take care of today, so I thought you might like some breakfast.”

Dean scooted around Cas to grab a cup of coffee, not wanting to meet the alpha’s eye but the happy scents suffused the room. He sat down at the island and the other man placed a plate of perfectly cooked breakfast in front of him. “Thanks man. I would’ve just grabbed a cup of java. But this—” he waved his hand over the plate. 

“Yes, well. I wanted to do—I needed to do something for you this morning.” Cas knotted his hands together as he sat down, watching Dean. “You do so much, Dean. For the kids, for your brother, for me and you never ask for anything in return, you never expect anything. So, here’s where it all changes. From now on, we are a team.”

Dean shook his head, “I’m not weak, Cas.”

“You’re the strongest person I know.” Cas reached across and took Dean’s hands in his. “I’m just saying that it’s okay to lean on someone else once in a while, let them help carry the burden.”

Dean took a hand back and concentrated on eating the food prepared for him. He knew that he did not have to answer, the kitchen smelled of content omega, and he couldn’t resist letting the sly smile steal across his face.   
Cas continued as if there had been no interruptions. “Now, you said you didn’t need any help, but I would like to do something, even if it’s just slicing and peeling or doing the dishes in between your…food things.”

“Food things?” Dean barely controlled not spitting egg out laughing at the alpha. “Is that the technical name for it?”

Cas shot Dean a side glance. “I don’t know the term, but there’s turkey and potatoes, stuffing, all those things.”

“They are called side dishes, and really, I got it handled. Prep is the key, so Sam and Jodi always take the kids the day before to give me peace and quiet to get stuff ready. Oh, that reminds me.” He glanced at his phone to check the time. “They’ll be here in like, an hour.”

They worked together to clean up the mess from making breakfast, before Dean began the prep on the turkey. He had boxes of butter that they would go through for the holiday and two had been left to soften overnight. He unwrapped the turkey and removed the innards, rinsing it off and patting it dry before setting it in a huge pan of stuffing. Cas looked aghast as Dean pulled the skin away from the meat then moved it back into place. He tilted his head, confused. “Why are you doing that?”

Dean looked at the man and smirked, “Watch, you’ll see.” He washed his hands again before taking a bowl, and dumping in a stick of butter, several cloves of minced garlic, salt, and pepper. He mixed it all together and set it aside. He cut an onion into large pieces and tossed them inside the bird. Then reached his hand in and scooped out a handful of the butter mixture and rubbed the outside of the turkey thoroughly, he took more and squeezed it in between the skin and the meat as far as he could get it inside, shoving a few sprigs of thyme and rosemary inside as well. 

As Dean washed his hands yet again, Cas spoke up. “That’s fairly…um…hands-on? I never would have done it that way.” 

Dean shrugged as he tented foil over it and threw it in the oven to cook. “That’s how Ellen did it when she made Thanksgiving dinner. It makes for a sort of self-basting bird, I don’t have to think about it, just take the foil off near the end to brown it up. Never another dry turkey.

The door opened and the twins ran in, heading straight for Dean, shouts of “Daddy!” filled the room as they hugged him. 

Sam nodded at Cas as he lugged the kid’s stuff past him and to their bedrooms. Jodi’s hands were full with a casserole dish as she followed him in. “Hey, Dean. I brought that sweet potato casserole you guys like. Just pop it in the oven for 30 minutes and it should be ready to eat. 

“Thanks, Jodes. Where are Ellen and Bobby?” Dean wiped his hands dry and took the dish from Jody and moved it to the kitchen as she kicked the door shut behind her. 

Sam walked up to Dean and gave him a quick hug. “They’ll be here in a little while, Ellen wanted to make deviled eggs. You know her, couldn’t be talked out of it.”

Dean rolled his eyes, “Did you tell her that I had everything covered?”

“I think she said something to the effect of ‘Shut it, Winchester’ and that if Jody was making something, so was she.”

“She’s very forceful.” Cas interjected.

Sam’s eyebrows rose, “You got to meet her?”

“Yeah,” Dean could feel his cheeks redden. “They kind of burst in on him the day they got in from the airport.”

“I thought you said the kids were sick?” Jodi looked from brother to brother.

Dean grabbed the back of his neck. “Cas watched them instead of hauling two sick kids to the airport. Ellen was pretty adamant about stopping over.”

“Yikes.” Sam’s mouth stretched in a mimic of a smile then relaxed. “That can’t have been fun.”

Cas chuckled darkly, “I halfway expected it. It wasn’t as bad as I was expecting,”

“Wait until you meet Jo.” Dean snorted.

A small hand reached up and tapped Cas on the arm, he looked down and saw Henry with his stuffed elephant. “This is Ernie.” The little boy held the toy up to Cas.

Cas knelt down to Henry’s level. “Well, hello Ernie. My name is Castiel.” He took one of the elephant’s legs and shook it like he was introducing himself. Henry threw his head back, laughing before running back towards the bedroom.

As the alpha stood, shaking his head in bewilderment, Jodi clapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, Cas, where’s your little one.”

As he perched himself back on the barstool in front of the omega, he glanced into the kitchen where Dean was busy pulling out dishes from the refrigerator and they caught each other’s eye for a moment. He cleared his throat. “She went with Hannah and   
Crowley to visit my mother in Chicago. Mother hasn’t been able to meet baby Felix yet, and Claire doesn’t get to see her as often as everyone would like.”

Sam collapsed into a chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “What about your dad?”

“Zachariah?” Cas shrugged. “He’s our step-father, actually, not exactly fatherly either. I’m not sure he cares either way if he has a relationship with his grandchildren, only if it makes him late for his tee-time. I stay away as much as I can, Zachariah is very religious, and we don’t agree on much.”

Sam grimaced in response. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t worry.” Cas waved him off, his smile tight. “I’ve dealt with good old Zach for half my life. He’s a prick and a fundamentalist, but for whatever reason Mom seems to love him.”

Dean clapping his hands together, then grabbing a couple platters, “Well, this has been uplifting. Here’s some snacks for everyone. Why don’t we not interrogate the guest today?”

Cas jumped from his seat and took one of the dishes from his hand, setting it on the table. “Want me to get anything else?” 

Dean looked around and cocked his head towards the kitchen, “Yeah, there’s a couple more plates in the kitchen that need to come out.” He ignored the curious looks between Sam and his mate


	24. Chapter Twenty-Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: Discussion of the previous assault

**CASTIEL**

By the time the family had left, Cas was exhausted from the tension. Every conversation seemed to turn into questions about his own family history, his plans for the future. He could tell that Dean’s family sensed the change in their relationship even though they had not said anything yet, had not had time to even discuss it between themselves. He hoped they would tonight, when everyone had left and they were together, or maybe tomorrow, Dean and him, as well as the children—his children. He could endure a tense family dinner for a future with Dean. 

He had sat next to the omega at dinner, with Ellen on the other side of him. The warmth from the man beside him calmed his nerves, relaxed him and made the dinner more bearable. As the food and beer flowed, he became less the center of attention as well. When things did turn towards the alpha, he would feel the warmth of Dean’s leg pressed against him easing his discomfort and anxiety until the conversation turned again. 

In the quiet on the evening, they relaxed together on the sofa, Dean leaning against Cas’s frame, fingers tracing light patterns against Dean’s denim clad leg. Cas felt the purr rumble in Dean’s chest. “Nickel for your thoughts, Cas?”

Cas smiled and pressed a light kiss into Dean’s hair. “What happened to a penny?”

“Inflation. Now, what’s got you thinking so hard up there?”

“I really don’t want to go to Chicago next week. The thought of leaving you, even for a few days…distresses me.”

Dean turned around in Cas’s arms and kissed him. “It’s just for a couple days, right?” Cas nodded and returned the kiss. When they stopped for air, Dean continued, “We’ll figure it out, Cas. I’m not going anywhere.” He stood and held his hand out towards the alpha, nodding his head towards the back off the house. 

Cas took Dean’s hand and followed him to the bedroom. He cradled the omega’s head in his hands and pressed his lids onto Dean’s, first cautiously, then as the heat rose between them, he plundered his tongue inside. Dean’s hands wrapped around him and grabbed handfuls of fabric from Cas’s shirt, lifting it out from under his waistband then slipping a hand underneath to his stomach and back. Cas felt the warmth of Dean’s skin against his and moaned. He slid his own hands down to lift Dean’s shirt over his head, their lips parting only to let the shirt pass between them. Cas’s shirt was gone as quickly, and he had backed Dean up until his legs were against the bed. 

Dean unbuckled his pants and let them fall, kicking them off to the side. Cas peeked down and saw a peek of black and white lace as his hands ran over Dean’s ass, causing the omega’s breath to hitch. Dean reached between them and ran a hand over Cas’s rock-hard erection then up to unfasten his pants. He moaned when he sprung free, Dean sucking on his collarbone. He whispered into Dean’s ear, his voice rough and needy, “What do you what?”

A high keen escaped Dean’s throat. “Fuck me, alpha.” Dean broke away and moved onto the bed, onto his hands and knees, presenting for the alpha. 

Slightly wary after the previous evening, he let his omega take the lead. But first, he took a step backwards and made sure the door was locked. Dean chuckled from his position, his head ducked around an arm. Cas smiled at his mate, Mate! “I don’t want any outside interruptions.” He knee walked towards Dean on the bed. He tenderly touched the black satin underwear and felt the silk slide under his hands. He could tell how slick Dean was under them but didn’t want to remove them just yet. Cas rubbed a thumb over Dean’s opening through the silky fabric, soaking it in fluids. He rubbed his hand down, between the omega’s spread legs to his balls and rolled them in his hand, feeling the slide against the slick material. Then up to Dean’s cock, hard under the lacy front and barely held with the satin and lace crossing it. The hard tip extending past the top of the lace and he ran the edge of his finger along it, his own erection pressing against Dean’s behind. 

“Cas, Cas, Cas.” Dean whispered.

“Feel good, omega? I’m going to make it feel even better.” Cas whispered to his love. He withdrew his hand until it was over Dean’s weeping hole again. He rubbed his thumb over the outside of the fabric again and then pressed inside, dragging the silky fabric with him. He thrust his thumb in and out again until Dean’s arms were shaking under him. Then he slid the fabric of the panties down carefully, until his hole was just exposed and slowly pressed his index finger inside. He worked Dean’s hole as more slick flowed out, probing for the nub that would light Dean up. “There it is.” He breathed as he teased it, coming back to it every third or forth stroke. Then he added a second finger, twisting them and scissoring to open Dean up, making him ready for Cas’s cock. 

“Do it, Cas! I’m ready, please. I need you!” Dean whined as a third finger joined the other two. 

“I don’t want to hurt you, my love.” Cas continued thrusting with his hand, his cock nearly purple with desire. 

“You can’t, Cas. I’m made for this, for you. Now fuck me!”

“Bossy, aren’t you?” Cas withdrew his fingers and used the fluids to slick up himself as he watched Dean’s hole clench around nothing. “Good your beautiful, your hole gaping for me, needing my knot.”

“Yes, your knot, Cas! Please!” 

Cas lined up the tip and slowly breached Dean’s hole, his hands firmly holding the omega’s hips in place as he inched in, savoring the sensations. He thought for a second he might come just from the feeling of how tight Dean was, but took a few deep breaths and stilled, letting Dean adjust to the cock filling him up. He dragged back, then slammed forward until he was bottomed out, causing both of them to moan. “Fuck yeah, Cas. Make me feel it the next day.” 

Cas thrust in again, faster and harder, moving his hand to the omega’s shoulder as leverage. He could feel them both climbing faster, and he shifted back until he was on his heels and Dean was on his lap, his back against Cas’s chest. He could feel himself get even deeper in this position, and he was hitting Dean’s prostate with each thrust. He ran a hand down Dean’s chest and into the lacy underwear to grab the omega’s dick, pumping it a few times until Dean arched his back and gripped Cas’s thigh, a long moan escaping with the come coating Cas’s hand. He felt his own orgasm build and his knot swelling and thrust forcefully up until it locked into place and he shot his own load deep into the omega. When he felt the last of the aftershocks subside, he leaned them forward and maneuvered them to their sides to wait out his knot, his omega wrapped in his arms.  


**DEAN**

Dean curled inwards against Cas as the alpha nuzzled into his neck, the place where the mating mark would go. Dean hummed at the feeling of Cas kissing him there, his fear that mating meant being tied to a single person to the rest of his life disappeared. Cas was it for him, there would be no other alpha for Dean. Cas’s scent of petrichor and fir trees had deepened to resemble a rainforest; contentment, sated, love, mate, flowed between them. “I love you, Cas.” The words slipped out quietly before Dean could stop them. He tensed slightly before Cas kissed over where his mating gland was. 

“I love you too, Dean.” 

Dean smiled and snuggled closer. They relaxed that way until Cas’s knot released and they could pull apart. Cas slipped out from behind him and walked to the bathroom, returning with a damp washcloth. He tugged the soaked panties off the rest of the way, tossing them to the floor, and smirked. “I guess these are ruined now.” 

Dean laughed, “Don’t worry, I have plenty.” 

“Mmmm,” Cas hummed into Dean’s mouth as he wiped between his legs. “I can’t wait to buy you more.” 

“Cas?” Dean whispered barely loud enough for the alpha to hear.

Cas propped himself up on his elbows, “Yes, my love?”

Dean wiggled slightly until he was sitting against the headboard. He took Cas’s hand in his. “Cas, if we go forward with this—with us, I have to be honest with you.” He looked down at his lap then back at the alpha, who was watching him with complete focus. “About when Sharpe took me.”

Tension surged from the alpha, “Dean, you never have to tell me about that if you don’t want to. Even when we mate, and yes that is what I intend if you agree, you will never be obligated to tell me what happened there.” He kissed Dean again, and the omega could feel the love flowing from his mate.

“I do want to be your mate, Cas. I can’t imagine anyone else I’d want to spend my life with. But this—this, I would like you to know about.”

Cas took Dean in his arms and held him, turning them so that Dean was sitting on Cas’s lap, the alpha against the headboard and he was pressed close to the alpha’s chest. “I’ve got you, whatever it is that you need to tell me, I won’t leave.”

“I know, Cas.” Dean took a deep breath and thought back to those horrible days at Newton Elementary. “It was subtle at first, you know, comments that you think you must have misheard or misunderstood. My school never did anything because he had a good reputation and there was no proof, just my word against his.” He felt Cas’s grip tighten against him briefly, then back to what it had been, all while his scent towards Dean remained calming. “Anyways, it went on for months. Ellen, Bobby, everyone knew I was under a lot of stress between the babies and what was going on at school, but no one knew the whole story, I made sure of that.”

“Dean, I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you.” Cas lowered his face into Dean’s shoulder. “I should have been there.”

Dean laid a hand on Cas’s chest, “No, alpha. None of this is your fault. Please don’t blame yourself, this was all my crappy decision.”

Cas bent forward and kissed Dean again. “Agree to disagree, my love.”

“Fine,” Dean blushed. “One of the things that kept happening though, was that I thought my desk was being gotten in to. Again, no proof, and even I wasn’t sure, but I did start not keeping important things in there. Too late as it happened, Sharpe’s partner had already made copies of keys to my apartment.”

“That’s how he got into your place!” Cas knocked his head back into the bed.

“Yeah, waited a long time though, until I was so thoroughly paranoid and stressed out, I couldn’t think straight. That’s when they broke in, switched out my suppressants with fertility pills that induced heats. It was bad. Induced heats—I don’t know if you know anything about them, but they are near impossible to spend alone. He would taunt me, as I lay there doped up on whatever it was that they injected me with and tell me that I would give in and beg for him to take my heat. That when I did, that it would be face to face, so that I knew who—who owned me.”

“Dean, there’s nothing to forgive. You were drugged, kidnapped, you did whatever you had to do to survive and come back to me.”

Dean pushed back against the alpha, “No, you don’t understand. I never did! You saved me, Cas. I would close my eyes and see your face and I knew that I would be okay.”

Cas’s eyes were wide and filled with unshed tears before he clutched Dean to his chest tightly. “I will always come when you call, Dean. I’m here for you now and forever.” The kiss was frantic, teeth and tears and hands running down the sides of each other’s faces. Dean nodded into Cas’s chest as the alpha’s arms encircled him tighter. “I love you so much, Dean. Never leave me, I don’t think I could survive it.”

“Me neither, alpha.” Dean felt a kiss press into his hair on the top of his head as they both calmed after Dean’s confession.

“Is that—” Cas hesitated, before taking a deep breath and continuing. “Is that what happened last night? You seemed to disappear inside your head when I asked you to move to your back.”

Dean nodded, “I would like to be with you—that way, at some point. Dr. Moseley says that things will come up when I least expect it sometimes.” He tried to control the whiff of anxiety that had returned to his scent, only to feel Cas snuggle closer to him. 

“I told you, Dean. I don’t care about the sex. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic, but I just want to be with you in whatever way you let me. I’m ecstatic that you’ll allow me to be your partner and share your life with me and if we never knot again, I still will die a happy man because you are my mate.”

“Well,” Dean smirked. “If we’re going to be mates, there’s going to be at least one other time we’ll knot.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“I cannot wait.”


	25. Chapter Twenty-Five

**CASTIEL**

The following three days were bliss for Cas and Dean, with Cas only leaving for a short time on Friday to pack two bags—one for the few days with Dean and his children and then a suitcase and garment bag for Chicago. Waking up next to each other was all Cas dreamed it would be, although they both learned pretty fast that boxer shorts or pajama bottoms or anything really would be required after any mating if the kids were home, to prevent morning childhood mental scarring. It had been decided by Cas and his mother that Claire would stay in Chicago those few extra days and simply return home with Cas at the end of his business trip. That, of course, meant at least one meal with Naomi and Zachariah Novak, his mother and step-father, something Cas would have rather done without. 

Cas sat at the airport gate, fielding texts from Dean, Baltazar, Hannah, and his mother as he waited for his plane to Chicago. The ones from Hannah and Bal were functional and direct, when does his plane arrive? Where was he staying? Etc. His texts to Dean were limited by the fact that Dean would be teaching class within the hour and he was wrangling the twins in their morning routine and getting ready for class himself. It was the relentless texts from his mother that set his teeth on edge. 

**From Mother:** _Dinner on Wednesday at Callahan’s, 7pm._

He couldn’t help rolling his eyes at his mother. Callahan’s wasn’t exactly the type of restaurant he would take a five-year-old to dinner. He debated grabbing another overpriced coffee before the flight boarded, he had been awake since 4am and his mother sucked all the energy out of him. 

**From Cas:** _Yes Mother, Claire and I will be there._

**From Mother:** _I would rather you didn’t bring Claire._

The alpha stared at the small screen. Even more confusing than picking a restaurant that was no place for a child was inviting him to a dinner that Claire was not.  
 **From Cas:** _Why?_

**From Mother:** _I want to discuss this omega of yours._

Cas rubbed a hand across his forehead. His mother had already voiced an opinion about Dean when they first reconnected, that Dean had been of a lower class, one not worth of the Novak millions. 

**From Cas:** _There’s nothing up for discussion Mother. He’s my mate._

**From Mother:** _Be reasonable Castiel_

**From Cas:** _I am not arguing with you over a text_

_*Flight 5982 direct to Chicago now boarding first class passengers*_

**From Cas:** _My flight is boarding. I’ll speak to you in Chicago._

He tried not to let his agitation with his mother exude into his scent. Being trapped in an airplane for four and a half hours with a hundred other people was bad enough on a normal day, but an annoyed alpha stench getting into the recirculated air inside would put everyone off. He turned his phone to airplane mode (so his mother could not contact him for now) and sought comfort in a video he had taken of Dean and the twins the evening before. Dean telling a story to them that he had clearly made up but they all knew, doing all the voices, of a race of dragon-people that lived high in the mountains and kept enormous herds of pigs and goats, not to eat but to barter in the markets for things they could not grow or make themselves. Cas was enthralled by the story and had recorded it to watch and keep his family close to him while he was away. It certainly did the trick calming him down, by the time the flight attendant took his boarding pass, he smelled of contented alpha again.

**DEAN**

Dean tidied his classroom after his class had left for the day, his own children coloring at the long table while he worked. Gabriel burst into the room, “Hey, kids!” He bent over and stretched out his arms for hugs. 

“Mr. Gabe!” Emma squealed and ran to hug the man. Henry following behind grabbing his waist. 

Henry tugged on Gabriel shirt and waited until Gabe lowered his ear to the boy. “Mr. Cas is dad’s boyfriend. Does that make you my uncle?”

Gabe broke out a grin as he stood, “I guess it would, Dean.”

Dean cocked his head, his mouth opening and closing before being able to speak. “Right. Uncle Gabe. Because I’m dating Cas.” 

The two stared at each other, “Hey kids, why don’t you go play over there for a few minutes while we talk.” Gabe waggled his eyebrows at Dean. “So, Dean-o. You and Cassie are, um, dating?”

“Surprise!” Dean held his hands up.

Gabe pulled Dean into a hug. “Have you…told the twins everything?” he asked quietly before separating. 

Dean ducked his head. “No,” his voice lower than it had been. “How do I even have that conversation?”

“Are you asking me for advice? Dude, I’m the fun cousin, I thought you knew that.”

Dean knocked into him with his hip. “Come on, you care more than you let on. Enlighten me, Obi-Wan.”

Gabe snorted, “Really, Dean. Obi-wan?”

“You know it’s true. Distanced himself so that he gave the illusion of not caring, was really overseeing his charges, and in the end, he sacrifices himself for the good of the rebellion.”

“So, I die in this scenario?” Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up; a smile cracked his mouth.

“For the good of the rebellion! You die a hero.” Dean pressed a hand over his heart in mocking solemnity. 

Gabe rolled his eyes, “As long as I die a hero, I guess I can be Obi-Wan.”

Dean’s phone rang, Cas’s name flashing against the screen. “Hey Cas. How was your flight? Sorry I couldn’t take you to the airport.”

“Hello Dean. Don’t worry about that. You had class and the children to get ready for.”

Dean smiled at the sound of Cas’s voice; he clicked the button to put him on speaker. “Hey, I’m here with Gabe. He doesn’t think he’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, but I think I’m bringing him over to my way of thinking.”

“What does a movie about destroying a large space vessel have to do with my cousin?” 

Dean snickered at the question, imagining the very serious look on Cas’s face, the head tilt. “No, babe. He shares some of the…you know, never mind. Don’t ever change.”

“I won’t. I’ve checked into the same hotel as Hannah and Crowley and I’m going to fetch Claire in a little bit for an early dinner. I think she will very much like the change in our relationship. She already thinks of Emma as something of a sister.”

“Hey cuz, say hi to Hannah and the two quirts for me. Are you having dinner with your mother?”

Dean could hear the heavy sigh from the other end. “Yes. Wednesday night, she wants it in public and without Claire. You know what that means.”

Gabe whistled, “She thinks you might make a scene about something.”

Dean broke into the conversation, “Whoa, whoa, why does she think you might make a scene, babe?”

“Dean.” He could hear Cas taking a measured breath. “She texted me right before my flight. She wants to talk about you, whether or not we’re suitable. You’re suitable.”

“Son of a bitch!” Dean barely held back throwing his phone. “Do you want me to come there? Because I can. We can face her together if you need me to.” Gabe placed a restraining hand on Dean’s arm. 

“No, Dean. I will not subject you to that just yet. I knew that she had slowly been taking on more and more of my step-father’s beliefs, but I never expected this.”

He began to pace around the room, the scent of anger and frustration leaking into his scent. He heard his alpha continuing to talk. “She has no hold over me anymore, she thinks she does, but she’s wrong. I’m financially sound and that money is mine, Claire is legally adopted by me, the only thing she risks is losing a relationship with her grandchildren and myself. You have nothing to worry about, my love.”  
Dean nodded before remembering that Cas could not see him and mumbled out a response, “Yes, alpha. But Cas--?”

“No buts, Dean. Any threats to you or to our relationship will leave her a lonely old woman with no one to love her. I will see you Friday.”

“Friday. I’ll miss you.”

“Miss you already.”

Dean ended the call, tapping the phone against his leg as he tried to think. Gabe hesitantly butted in, “Dean? Don’t worry, Naomi and Zachariah Novak have no leverage to make Cas do anything.”

Dean noticed Gabe’s dropping the nickname of Cassie for Cas but couldn’t stop glancing at the twins while a pit formed in his stomach.


	26. Chapter Twenty-Six

**CASTIEL**

Cas entered the headquarters of Novak Corporation at 830 the next morning, still tired from the time difference but at least he had found a decent cup of coffee on the way from the hotel. The receptionist stopped him as he entered the lobby. A recent hire, as he did not recognize Castiel.

“Can I help you, sir?” the blond beta looked Cas up and down as if he was judging him and finding him lacking. 

“I’m here to see Baltazar Milton.”

The beta sneered, “He doesn’t have any appointments this morning.”

Cas’s face was stone, “That’s because he’s meeting with me. Now, be a good boy and call upstairs.”

The man grabbed the phone off the receiver and dialed the extension. “What name shall I say is here?” His tone had still not changed from the condescending shit he had been during the whole transaction.

Cas’s smile was predatory. “Novak. What’s yours?”

The receptionist went white and nearly dropped the phone, just in time for Baltazar’s assistant to pick up. “Meg? A Mr. Novak is here for Mr. Milton?”

Cas couldn’t hear his friend, Meg’s response, but she hadn’t been the assistant to the CEO for her ability to please people. From the look on the man’s face, he was being promised a slow, painful death. He hung up the receiver and raised his eyes to Castiel’s, 

“Go right ahead sir, they are expecting you.”

Cas walked imperiously past the reception desk, in a small way hoping the man wasn’t fired, but that this had been a teaching opportunity. Another voice, the cutthroat business man side of him, would be gleeful to let the man go and have security escort him from the building. His thoughts went back and forth until the elevator let him off on the top floor. He stepped off and immediately saw Meg, her headset in her ear and the latest spreadsheet reflected on her glasses as she continued her work. To look at her like this, you would not assume she was such a shark, but get her cornered, or make a mistake, threaten one of her friends—you would see the teeth. 

She glanced up at the movement towards her and grabbed the headset off her to stand and embrace her old boss. “Hey, Clarence. You come back to kick Baltazar back out of the big office? He’s doing a pretty decent job, you know?”

Cas smiled at the omega. “He is, I just wanted to talk to him in person about this whole Roman shit show. Skype and phone calls can only do so much.”

“Mmm, yes.” She tucked a piece of hair behind and ear and locked an arm with his. “I heard a little rumor about you, my friend.”

Cas stopped and turned towards his friend, one brow cocked up, “What kind of rumor, Meg?”

“Oh, that, you ran into your long-lost love, found out that you didn’t leave him as alone as you thought. Have rekindled the romance. Something like that?”

Cas shook his head, “That’s a gross oversimplification of what happened.”

She clapped her hands together as she let out a laugh, “Clarence, you asshole. I guess we’ll never get a chance to move some furniture around ourselves.”

“Meg, I hope I didn’t, I mean—”

“Stop,” Meg put her hand up towards him. “I was never pining for you if that’s what you’re getting at. I mean, maybe when we first met, I had a tiny crush, but I got over that pretty quickly. Besides we’d never work, we’d be that couple that just fought and fucked. Which as fun as part of that might be, I think we’re better as friends.”

Cas embraced the shorter woman, “You’ll always be my friend. I can’t wait for you to meet my mate, Dean.”

Meg laughed, “You better believe I’m going to meet him, it’s my prerogative as your friend to approve all your potential mates.”

“Of course.”

Meg tossed her head towards the closed office door. “Come on, let not keep Bal waiting any longer.”

Meg rapped on Baltazar’s door and entered before waiting for a response. Baltazar stood to greet his friend. “Cassie, good to see you face to face.” 

The beta embraced the alpha, and Cas noticed the hint of Meg in Baltazar’s scent but chose not to mention it. The two were adults and he would get the story out of each of them soon enough. Meg caught his eyes and for a second, looked down and blushed, but a smile teased the corners of her mouth as she exited. “It’s been too long, Bal. The staff doesn’t even recognize me!”

“Yes, well, I’m sorry about Bartholomew. He’s a temp because Muriel is out for a few weeks.”

“Is she alright?”

Baltazar sat back in his chair, “More than alright, she’s on her honeymoon. Off to Italy for 14 days.”

“I’m happy for her, she was very kind. Always trying to help people.” Cas sat in the leather chair across from his friend.

“Yes, that’s why several of us agreed to give her this trip as a wedding present. Inias and her are not particularly wealthy, but they are always helping someone or something. They’re good people.”

“I’m glad she found someone who matches her spirit. And thank you for sending her on her honeymoon. I’ll send a gift to them when I get back if you have Meg get me their address.”

Baltazar smiled, “Of course.” He made a note of it. “Now I know we’ve had our share of disagreements about this whole Dick Roman fiasco, and I’m glad you’re here. Our team was finally able to suss out a name for our mystery investor. Perhaps you can speak to him.”

Cas squinted his eyes at his friend. “Why would I be able to talk to him?”

Baltazar laid the folder on the desk, “Well, he lives in the bay area like you. Let me see, his name is here, ah yes, Charlie Bradbury in Mountain View.” 

Cas started to laugh, and then found he couldn’t stop. Baltazar frowned at him, “I hardly find this debacle a laughing matter, Cassie.”

Cas took a deep breath, wiping the tears out of his eyes. “Bal, you don’t get it! Charlie is a woman.”

“So, you’ve met this mystery woman? Is that why they didn’t sell, a personal favor?”

Cas shrugged, still chuckling. “I have no idea. But, she’s my mate’s best friend, so, yes, probably.”

“She’s you mate’s best friend?” Baltazar leaned back in the leather chair. “Darling, I think you’ve missed a few details in telling me this story. Did you finally stop your little dance around Dean and ask him out?”

Cas felt his cheeks heating up, “That wasn’t the exact order that things happened, but yes, Dean has agreed that we will mate permanently when he has his heat.”

“Cassie, you sly dog, you. Let you alpha out to play a little? Good for you. Not good to let everything bottle up so much. How did mommy take it?”

“Ugh, we’re having dinner at Cavanagh’s tomorrow night to ‘discuss’ it.” Cas rolled his eyes. “She already made her objections to him clear when I told her about her grandchildren. Her reaction was that the omega was using them to get at the Novak money.”

Balthazar snorted. “Right, that’s why he never told you about them all these years, as a grand plan to get your money. As I recall, doesn’t he have money himself?”

“I think he has some from the civil case,” Cas shrugged. “But I have no idea, really. Money isn’t something we’ve even talked about.”

“You know that only the people who have money don’t have that conversation before they mate, or they are overcome in a swirl of mating heat pheromones. That could have described you the first time the two of you met, but not now. If you haven’t had that talk, it’s because neither one of you have any sort of financial insecurity. You said he lives in Palo Alto; does he own a house?”

Cas scrunched his brows together, “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

Balthazar shrugged. “Humor me.”

“Yes, I think it’s a three or a four bedroom? Bit of a back yard. The house Claire and I have is a little smaller.”

“Right and look how much you paid for it. He’s a kindergarten teacher just like Gabe, who lives with his girlfriend to afford to rent a tiny place, and he owns a three, four-bedroom house? So, tell your mother to stick it in her ear!”

The distinct Skype ring sounded through the hotel room; Castiel was surprised to see Henry answer the call instead of his mate. “Hello, De—Henry? Hello.”

“Hello Mr. Casteel. Daddy is helping Emma.” The boy looked around and cupped his hand around his mouth as he whispered overly loud, “She made a mess a dinner and now she has to have a bath.”

“That does happen.” Cas said seriously to the boy. “But you did not make a mess?”

Henry shook his head seriously, “No, ‘cuz I knows you were going to call on the computer and then I wouldn’t get to talk to you if I did.”

He felt his eye prickle with unshed tears, and he smiled tentatively, “You wanted to talk to me?”

The blond headed child that shared his features tilted his head to the side, just like he did when he was thinking. “Of course, I did, Mr. Casteel. You’re like me, most people say I should be like Emmy, but she’s very loud and sometimes I don’t like it.”

Cas took a deep breath, wanting to hug the boy, his boy. “I know, Henry. I had a twin brother too; he was very much like Emma. He made friends with everyone, and most times I wanted to just watch the people.”

Henry’s eye lit up, “I love watching the people! Do you like your brother?”

“I did, very much.” Cas had expected this conversation to be like a knife to the chest but talking to his own boy felt like a balm to his heart. He managed a weak smile. “I miss him a lot.”

Henry’s entire face scrunched together, “Did he go away?”

Hands reached down and picked the boy up. Dean sat on the chair and placed Henry in his lap. “Henry, do you remember cousin Gwen? What happened?”

The small blond head nodded. “She was kilt in a accident.”

Dean slid his hand down Henry’s hair and kissed the top of his head. “Well, Mr. Castiel, his brother Jimmy and his mate were in an accident too. That’s why he’s Claire’s papa now.”

“Claire’s momma died, too!” He whispered. “Dad! Dad! You have to marry Mr. Casteel now.”

Cas chuckled on the other end of the call. “Why is that, Henry?”

“Because she don’t have a have a momma, and we don’t have a poppa! But if you get married, you’ll be our poppa and our dad will be Claire’s momma!”

The blood drained out of Castiel’s face as he stared across the screen at Dean. 

**DEAN**  


Dean rubbed his forehead. “Right, I guess now’s the time. Cas, I’m going to move the laptop to the living room and get Emma. Do you have Claire there?” Cas looked at him without answering. “Cas!” Dean snapped his fingers. “Do you have Claire there?”

“Yes, of course, Dean. I was going to put her on if she wanted to say hi. You want me to get her?”

“Yes, Cas.” Dean closed his eyes and tried not to let the exasperation get to him, this was a difficult conversation for the both of them. “I’ll be right back with Emma. Henry can you sit on the couch for me?”

“Okay, Daddy!” He grinned and clapped when he saw Claire on the other screen. “Hi Claire!”

“I have a new cousin, Henry! His name is Felix! He’s so tiny, but if I’m really careful and someone helps, I can hold him. He’s so cute!”

“Claire!” Emma squealed as she threw herself onto the couch. 

Dean rolled his eyes as he sat in between them. “Em, sit still for a second, we need to talk to everyone.”

Emma scooted back against her father as he slipped and arm around her. She waved her little hand at the two people on the screen. 

“Emma, Henry, Claire.” Dean paused to put his other arm around Henry and take a breath. “Castiel and me have some things we need to talk about, and we wanted to wait until they were back so we could be all together, but,” he shrugged his shoulders.  
Cas gave a small nod to signal to him that he was doing well, so Dean continued. “Claire, I’m sure that Papa Cas told you that we are…dating?”

Claire nodded, “Yep, and you are going to be mated like my Auntie Hannah and Uncle Crowley.” The blonde girl twisted back and forth in her seat, her braids swinging wide. 

“Okay, kiddo, calm down. One step at a time.” Dean held up a hand. “That is the plan, but there’s a lot to talk about first.”

Cas piped up, “Dean’s right sugar bean. When people decide to spend their lives together, they have to make sure they really like each other first, especially if they have kids. Otherwise they end up fighting all the time”

“Like Uncle Abner?”

“Right my cousin Abner,” he was speaking more now towards Dean and the twins than Claire, “He married Gadreel very fast after they met. We all told them to wait, but he had been sick for a long time and said he didn’t want to waste any more time. Then they  
started to fight all the time. He even stayed at our house for a little while.”

“He has a dog named Sera—Ser…” She looked up at Cas, questioningly.

“Seraphim. Yes, Sera was a good dog. My point is that sometimes if you don’t get to know each other first, you won’t be happy with each other once you marry. Abner and Gadreel were lucky that he was a beta because they could separate and break their bonds. It hurt Abner a lot, but it worked out right?”

Claire nodded vigorously, “Right, he married Aunt Julie, and they had a baby!”

Cas laughed. “She loves babies. Not toddlers, so much, just little babies. Fascinated by them.”

Dean smiled, “What’s not to love about little babies?” God, he wished they were all here together. “Anyways, so when we get married, you guys are going to be affected. I’m going to be Claire’s dad, and you three munchkins will be more like sisters and brother.”

Emma looked at her dad, puzzled. “Is Mr. Casteel going to be our Papa? You said your going to be Claire’s dad, so that would make Mr. Casteel our Papa.”

Dean cleared his throat, closed his eyes and pressed forward. “Guys, we have something to tell you. Mr. Castiel, he—he is your Papa.”

Both the twins cocked their heads to the side. Emma thrust her lower lip out, chin quivering. “You said our Papa was dead.” She whispered. 

“I know honey. I made a mistake.” He tried to hug her, but she pulled away, angry. 

“I don’t understand.” Henry stated, his eyes going back and forth from his dad to Cas’s face on the laptop. 

“Henry, Emma, darling.” Cas started. “I met your dad I long time ago, and I was smitten from the first glance, and so was he. But we lost each other. He saw my twin brother.” Cas pulled up a picture of Jimmy and Cas on his phone, their arms thrown around each other’s shoulder at Jimmy’s wedding. The two were identical except Cas’s face split in a grin and Jimmy looking like a lovesick fool at his wife. “He looked just like me, not twins like you guys. Your dad saw Jimmy and thought it was me, thought I lied to him and was married. He left.” Cas’s eyes looked down in sadness. “I never knew about you.”

“I’m so sorry, Cas.” Dean mumbled to his partner. 

“Dean, I told you, I understand, and I forgive you. I probably would have don’t the same.”

Emma grabbed Dean’s face in her hands, glaring at him. “You lied to me!”

Dean shook his head, “No, Emma, I did not. I made a mistake, but I did not lie to you. I did not know it was Cas until I started teaching Claire this year. That’s how we both found out. Now, I didn’t tell you right away because I wanted to make sure he was sticking around. I was not going to tell you and then let him break your heart a month later if he didn’t want the responsibility. You’re a very intelligent girl, Ems, you have friends that don’t have a mom or dad but there’s always a new ‘friend’ hanging around their parent.” 

Emma nodded; her chin still wobbly. “You thought Mr. Casteel would do that?” her voice was quiet now and she finally allowed him to gather her into a hug. 

“Honey no,” he kissed the top of her head again. “Not really. But do you ever get scared of something that ends up being ridiculous? After you can’t remember why you were scared, but when you were there, it was horrible.”

Henry nodded, “Like when I climbed up the ladder for the tree house Grampa Bobby built?”

“Exactly!” Dean hugged Henry. “You were so scared that you were going to fall out the tree house, but now you love it. That’s what it was like for me. First, I didn’t want to tell you, because I thought he might leave, and then I was scared because I knew you would be mad. And you are, but not like I thought you would be. It’s always better when you talk things out.”

Henry looked at Cas, “Can I call you Papa Cas like Claire?”

Cas nodded, choking slightly on his tears. “That would be wonderful, sweetheart.”

“Okay, I think it’s time to let Cas go for tonight. It’s been a tough evening for all of us.”

Cas waved at Dean and his children, “Goodnight, I love all of you.”

“Goodnight, Cas, night Claire. Love you guys too.” Dean and the kids waved back as the chat disconnected. He flopped backwards onto the sofa and the kids huddled around him, their faces inches apart. 

He heard them whisper to each other, “We have a dad!”


	27. Chapter Twenty-Seven

**CASTIEL**

Cas approached the hostess at Callahan’s with Claire when he heard his mother’s imposing voice. “Castiel, how good to see you. I’m surprised you brought Claire with you.” Her slightly greying hair tarnishing the reddish bronze that crowned her head. Her disapproving frown tightening into a grimace as she glanced at the child and back at him. “I believe that when we spoke, I expressed my wishes to you.”

Cas met his mother’s glare, “You were quite clear in your wishes, I just don’t care. You can accept my choice and have an amicable dinner; else Claire and I will return to the hotel and order a pizza.”

“Don’t be a child, Castiel.” Naomi swept past him imperiously as she approached the hostess to announce their presence for the reservation, leaving him to stand awkwardly with his stepfather who said nothing. 

Dinner was nothing if not tense. Zachariah and Naomi both asking impertinent and very pointed questions about Dean, the twins, and his supposed lack of character for allowing himself to fall pregnant (as if Cas had nothing to do with it), then accusing him of going after Cas’s money, and lastly, the crime of keeping the children secret from him. As the evening wore on, Cas’s answers became single word replies as he focused instead on his niece instead, making sure that she knew that her grandparent’s accusations we not true. 

He finally reached the tipping point when he emphatically refused to drop the promise of mating Dean at their demand. “Think of your reputation, Castiel!” she admonished.

“My reputation!” he choked out. “I presume you mean a reputation as an alpha that does not abandon their mate. An alpha that loves and cherishes his children, both the ones that he raised and the ones he did not.” He gripped Claire’s hand as they both stared his mother down. “I have wanted to mate Dean since the first time I scented him, and we finally have the chance after all these years. You’re the one that told me about what it’s like when you meet your mate, how it was with Chuck—an omega who was just as ‘low-class’ as you make Dean out to be. You never let that love grow, mother. It choked the life out of my father until he died. You were too worried about the stock of Novak industries to worry about your omega mate at that point. But at least we had Chuck and his sister, Amara. You hated that Aunt Amara took me in so much of the time, but father’s sister turned out to be the mother I never had. And cold and ruthless that she was in the boardroom, what she always wanted was a family—the opposite of you whose family was an afterthought.”

Zachariah’s face was red as he held in his rage at his step-son, in his mind drawing attention to their table. “Castiel Novak! You are a disgrace of an alpha, speaking to your mother that way.”

“Oh, of course you have an opinion, Zach.” Cas downed another swallow of expensive wine. “Cozy there, a beta mate to an alpha woman? Didn’t I hear that church you like to frequent say something about alpha women, how they are a…what was the word? Oh yes, a grotesque, twisting of god’s plan. What does that make my mother, Zach? But of course, you would never say anything about her, you’re the one who might lose his tee-time.”

Zachariah narrowed his eyes to slits as he resumed his silence. Naomi, however, would not be cowed. “You know very well that there are good and bed eggs in every congregation, Castiel. I can’t expect that you know the depth of the fervency of Father Michael when you only see inflammatory sound bites on the television.”

Cas sighed, “I really don’t want to get into a discussion about the hypocrisy of the First Alpha Church of God tonight. However, since it has colored your beliefs for a while now, let me say that if you continue to fight me in this manner, you will die abandoned and alone, with no one alive to mourn you. Good by Naomi, Zachariah.” He stood, grabbing Claire’s hand. As he left, he flagged down his waiter and handed the man a couple hundred-dollar bills to cover his portion of the bill and a generous tip—since his parents would not tip well, and they walked into the night.

**DEAN**

Three weeks later Dean’s heat hit. He had talked to his doctor about switching to simple birth control without the suppressants or the claiming inhibitor just after Cas had returned from his trip to Chicago and the wait for the heat had been agonizing for the two of them. It did, however, give them time to move Cas and Claire’s things to Dean’s house since it was bigger and had a larger back yard. Unfortunately, they felt it best to wait to sell Cas’s house for now since he had only purchased it less than six months previously. That in itself turned out to be a boon, since Charlie and Gilda had decided to move from Mountain View to Palo Alto. Now that they were looking into adopting, they both wanted to be close to the people they considered family, Sam and Dean Winchester, and their mates and children. 

He had felt the prickly irritation the day before but had dismissed much of it as being the Friday before winter break frantic rush that happened every year. By the time that classes were over, Gabe and Benny both had said something about him being snappy at them. Saturday morning, waking up with Cas laying beside him, the alpha running his hands up and down his sides and biting on his neck. “Fuck, you smell good, Dean.”

“Mmmm, Cas, stop. We have to get the kids up, Charlie’s coming over this morning and were supposed to host game day.”

Cas buried his nose in the crook of Dean’s neck and pressed closer. “Charlie’s coming over alright, then she’s going to have to take the kids for the next few days. It’s here baby.”

Dean rolled over half way to face the alpha, “Gods, you’re right. That’s why I was so crabby yesterday, Gabe didn’t want to set foot within ten feet of me.”

“I would rather than no alpha comes within thirty feet of you when you smell like this.” Cas growled and sucked a mark into his mate’s skin near to where the mating bite would go. 

Dean moaned in response. “Don’t you think one alpha can come close to me? Alpha!” he could feel the slick pooling in his underwear. 

“Ugh, you will be the death of me.” Cas pressed his forehead into Dean’s back, letting the scents surround him. 

“But what a way to go.” Dean closed his eyes at the sensations, before standing and walking away. 

“What are you doing?” Cas reached for him.

“I’m going to take a cold shower and get dressed while you call Charlie and give her the rundown. You will not follow me into the shower. When I am done, you take a shower and come out and have breakfast with me and the kids.”

Cas’s eyes sparkled, “So bossy.”

Dean tossed a throw pillow at him. “Hey, I know what I’m doing. I got a few hours still, time to take care of things first so we don’t have to scramble later.”

“How did I get so lucky?” Cas grinned.

Dean shrugged, “I don’t know but I feel the same. We must have saved the world a time or two in our past lives.”

It took a couple hours, but the children were packed and gone to their Auntie Charlie’s and they were finally alone. Dean’s heat was beginning to ramp up and he would be needing his mate soon. They approached each other in the living room and wrapped each other into a kiss. What started as a simple loving embrace, soon turned fiery, each fighting for dominance over the other’s mouth. Cas’s hands held Dean’s head between them as he plundered the inside with his tongue and Dean began to melt. Dean had slipped his under the fabric of Cas’s thin tee shirt, the warmth of his hands searing into Cas’s skin and the muscles underneath. 

Soon, Cas’s shirt was off and cast aside as Cas started to move them back towards their bedroom. Dean’s shirt followed, but they were too overcome to notice. Dean backed up until his legs bumped against the side of the bed. Cas slid his hands down his mate’s back, now glistening with a slight sheen of sweat from the heat, amplifying his scent. They probably could not stop if they wanted to, but they both wanted to continue. One hand dipped into the sweats Dean had slipped on after the shower and was surprised by the feel of satin. He stepped back as the pants fell around Dean’s ankles and drunk in the sight. His mate in satin and lace panties, a deep blue. 

Dean smiled. “I like this pair, alpha, they’re the color of your eyes.”

Cas rumbled a growl in response before dropping his own sleep pants. His mate’s eye widened when Dean saw that Cas had gone without underwear and was already hard and weeping. Dean smashed his body forward and into a bruising full body kiss with his alpha, taking a hand between them and giving Cas’s cock a couple strokes to make the man groan. “Fuck me, alpha. Fuck me and make me your mate.”

Dean released Cas from his hold and stepped back, sitting on the bed, then sliding backwards until he was all the way on top of the mattress, never breaking eye contact. Cas leaned over and crawled over him, kissing his way up Dean’s torso, until he claimed his lips again. He leaned into Dean’s neck again, “This is where I’m going to bite you, Dean. Where I’m going to make you mine.”

Dean moaned under him. Cas reached down and gently slid the silken garments off Dean, “Wouldn’t want to ruin this pair.” Dean responded by spreading his legs wider and Giving Cas more room. The alpha’s hand stroked up the inner thigh and into the weeping crack, dipping a finger inside. Dean arched up under him, gasping at the touch. “Fuck you’re wet, so open for me too.”

Dean was panting, “Yes, fuck, Cas, I need you so bad. Fuck me.”

“As you wish,” Cas leaned forward to capture Dean’s mouth in a kiss as he slid into the wet heat of his mate. He reached one hand down and slipped it along Dean’s thigh until he reached a knee and raised it up, encouraging Dean to wrap his long legs around his body, driving Cas in deeper. Their kisses became open mouths exchanging gasps of oxygen as Cas pummeled in harder and faster. He could feel the tingling of his orgasm approaching and changed his angle to hit Dean’s prostate with every thrust. He knew he’d found the right spot when Dean buckled up again and howled his name out, the friction between their bodies causing Dean to come between them. He kept pounding into Dean as his omega came down from his high, he could feel his knot forming and was now chasing the sensations. It began to grab with each thrust until finally, it thrust in and locked inside the omega, Cas leaning into Dean’s neck to bite into him where the neck meets the shoulder, where the scent glands are. Dean came again at the powerful changes that racked his body, tying him to Castiel for the rest of his life, before passing out from bliss. 

When Dean awoke, Cas was cleaning his bite wound with his tongue, the healing powers of the were was already causing it to knit together. It was a good strong bite, and with their next mating, Dean would mark Cas as his.

**FIN**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, not really stated, but the day they mate is the anniversary of their meeting, because I like things coming back around to the beginning--only better


End file.
